Source Engine Games Locking Up

[oface12]

So I decided to upgrade my whole rig this past week and ever since I got it loaded, I've been having problems with Steam. I am able to load TF2 or DOD:Source or CS:S just fine and join a server, but anywhere from 1min in to 1 hour in, it locks up on me. I do not have this problem with any NON source engine games. I played CS 1.6 for about 2 hours and Doom 3 for about an hour and a half this morning and not even a hickup at the VERY highest settings. The game still progresses VERY slowly, so I don't hear the same looping sounds over and over and over. But the game basically crashes. My friend was in a server with me and it crashed in the middle of a jump and I just hung in mid air. I let it run for a few minutes one time after it started to F up and it closed the game and brought up the error "Engine Error Failed to lock vertex buffers in CmeshDX8::LockVertexBuffer". Steam says this error is due to not enough paged pool data or something like that. I used process explorer and while in TF2 I was nowhere near the 150MB mark that they said. While in TF2, my paged physical was around 70ish MB.

I am able to Alt+Tab out of the game and I still have full resolution at 1440x900 on the desktop, so I don't think that it is my video drivers or I would be forced back to 4:3 instead of widescreen.

I tried messing with the launch options on TF2 with -dx8, -dxlevel 90, -dxlevel 70, -nosound and none of these fixed the problem. I did the noosound to make sure that it wasn't my audio drivers F'n up. I will run the game again and take a picture of the screen so that you can see what I mean when I say that it pixels like crazy. It almost looks like it kicks it back down to 4bit color. A couple times, an error message saying that nv4_dsp driver stopped working correctly and I had to restart my comp to get past 800x600/4bit color on DESKTOP.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!!

Setup:
CPU: Intel Q9450
CPU Fan: Zalman 9700
Mobo: EP35C-DS3R
Ram: 2GB Corsair DDR2-1066
PSU: Corsair 750W
Video: BFG 8800GTX OC
Case: CoolerMaster CM690

I have all the latest windows updates, drivers and bios for everything. I have already re-formatted about 5 times.

BRING ME YOUR THOUGHTS!

Sorry if this was a bit long, I wanted to be thorough. Let me know if I'm forgetting any info.

 

[oface12]

O yea, I tried ALL the things that were on Steam's support page, and none of them worked. My boot.ini did not have that lock line in it, so I couldn't fix it that way.

I found a website from googleing this problem that had instructions on how to use regedit to increase the paged pool size, I tried that and it didn't work. I was, however, able to get a solid 20 minutes gaming time in when I did that, but it still crashed on me.



SOMEONE HELP ME!!! I have an awesome computer that can't play source games!!! I am missing my TF2!

 

[oface12]

Can anyone give me an idea on what to try????

 

[kylew]

Can anyone give me an idea on what to try????

Have you tried deleting the game data and re-downloading it? I've had a few issues with steam (source) games similar to you, they went away when I re-installed windows. I didn't re-install to solve the problem though, it was another issue. I think deleting the local game data and re-downloading them will get them working again, if not, re-install windows if you've just done a major PC overhaul.