# [SOLVED] hl2.exe has stopped working, exhausted all options on steam support website



## Kerstmis (Mar 30, 2009)

I just bought Team Fortress 2 for the PC, but everytime I try to start it, it says "preparing to launch..." and either never launches, or shows a box that says "hl2.exe has stopped working"

I've looked around on the steam forums and troubleshooter and have tried everything they've advised

I've been told it might be that my video card is not compatible, but it fits the minimum requirements for TF2


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## McNinja (Jun 22, 2008)

*Re: hl2.exe has stopped working, exhausted all options on steam support website*

I need to know your PC specs

CPU
RAM
PSU
Motherboard
Graphics Card

have you tried running steam.exe as administrator?


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## Kerstmis (Mar 30, 2009)

*Re: hl2.exe has stopped working, exhausted all options on steam support website*



Mcninjaguy said:


> I need to know your PC specs
> 
> CPU
> RAM
> ...


It's a Dell Inspiron E1505 Laptop

CPU: Intel T2080 @ 1.73 GHz Dual Core
RAM: 1022 MB
Graphics Card: ATI Mobility Radeon X1400

I don't know how to find out what motherboard/psu I have...

Yes, i've tried running it as administrator, still didn't work


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## McNinja (Jun 22, 2008)

*Re: hl2.exe has stopped working, exhausted all options on steam support website*

no I don't need the motherboard if its a laptop and you gave me the name of it.

what about running it as compatibility mode XP SP2?


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## Kerstmis (Mar 30, 2009)

*Re: hl2.exe has stopped working, exhausted all options on steam support website*



Mcninjaguy said:


> no I don't need the motherboard if its a laptop and you gave me the name of it.
> 
> what about running it as compatibility mode XP SP2?


hmm, the first time i did that, it said "the game is unavailable at this moment"

then i restarted and tried again, and just got the hl2.exe error again


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## Aus_Karlos (Mar 10, 2007)

*Re: hl2.exe has stopped working, exhausted all options on steam support website*

Go into the launch options of the game and add the line *-dxlevel81*. This will force the game to load up in DX8.1 and not DirectX 9. It seems that the X1400 can run the game but when in DX9 the game crashes a lot and you will get an average frame rate of 15.
Switching to DX8.1 you will get a boost in frames at the cost of some image quality.


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## -WOLF- (Jan 17, 2009)

*Re: hl2.exe has stopped working, exhausted all options on steam support website*

Or maybe running the game in DirectX 7 mode like my dinosaur of an MX 200 had to run HL2 in.


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## Kerstmis (Mar 30, 2009)

*Re: hl2.exe has stopped working, exhausted all options on steam support website*



Aus_Karlos said:


> Go into the launch options of the game and add the line *-dxlevel81*. This will force the game to load up in DX8.1 and not DirectX 9. It seems that the X1400 can run the game but when in DX9 the game crashes a lot and you will get an average frame rate of 15.
> Switching to DX8.1 you will get a boost in frames at the cost of some image quality.


same thing, loads for a while, then "hl2.exe has stopped working"

I tried putting in -dxlevel81 and dxlevel7


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## Kerstmis (Mar 30, 2009)

*Re: hl2.exe has stopped working, exhausted all options on steam support website*

Also, my ATI Catalyst Control Center won't open, no error message or anything
it's just that nothing happens

since this seems to be a graphics card issue, I thought knowing this might help


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## RockmasteR (Aug 10, 2007)

*Re: hl2.exe has stopped working, exhausted all options on steam support website*

hello,
this could be a driver error
download driver sweeper from my sig
then uninstall your Video card drivers and then use driver sweeper to remove all the drivers remaining
download the drivers from here :

http://support.dell.com/support/dow...SPIRONI6400/E1505&os=WW1&osl=en&catid=&impid=

choose your operating system, your language and the desired driver
(display or Video, I don't which one they meant for the Video card)
maybe also you need to update all your drivers, to keep your Laptop up to date


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## M1918A1 (Apr 2, 2009)

*Re: hl2.exe has stopped working, exhausted all options on steam support website*

The current ATI drivers are buggy.....I had fits for 2 weeks trying to get Fable:the lost chapters to do anything besides crash and reboot the computer as soon as I turned it on....The computer had a fresh install of windows XP and the current ATI drivers. I went to Omega Drivers and got their tweaked year old drivers and it worked perfect....you may want to try them after you get rid of your current drivers

http://www.omegadrivers.net/ati.php


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## Kerstmis (Mar 30, 2009)

*Re: hl2.exe has stopped working, exhausted all options on steam support website*



M1918A1 said:


> The current ATI drivers are buggy.....I had fits for 2 weeks trying to get Fable:the lost chapters to do anything besides crash and reboot the computer as soon as I turned it on....The computer had a fresh install of windows XP and the current ATI drivers. I went to Omega Drivers and got their tweaked year old drivers and it worked perfect....you may want to try them after you get rid of your current drivers
> 
> http://www.omegadrivers.net/ati.php


"Stay Tuned, Coming Soon.. "

Guess i'll have to live with normal drivers for now


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## Tiber Septim (Feb 9, 2006)

*Re: hl2.exe has stopped working, exhausted all options on steam support website*

The link seems to be working for me, it is displaying a list of all available Omega drivers.


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## Aus_Karlos (Mar 10, 2007)

*Re: hl2.exe has stopped working, exhausted all options on steam support website*

No Omega drivers for Vista have been released yet.
Use my sig to get the latest ATI drivers, it does seem your drivers are corrupt as you cannot access the control center.


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## Kerstmis (Mar 30, 2009)

*Re: hl2.exe has stopped working, exhausted all options on steam support website*



Aus_Karlos said:


> No Omega drivers for Vista have been released yet.
> Use my sig to get the latest ATI drivers, it does seem your drivers are corrupt as you cannot access the control center.


I used the website on your sig and got this:

"Currently AMD does not provide any driver support for Mobility Radeon™ products. All driver and technical support for Mobility Radeon™ products is provided by the original laptop or notebook manufacturer. The drivers that are available for download at ati.amd.com are for desktop products only.

To download Windows Vista Mobility Radeon™ drivers or driver updates for your laptop or notebook product, please visit your laptop or notebook manufacturer's website."


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## Kerstmis (Mar 30, 2009)

*Re: hl2.exe has stopped working, exhausted all options on steam support website*

So I downgraded to Windows XP on this laptop, and it works now

was this a conflict between Vista and my Graphics card?, because some of my friends play TF2 on vista computers

I'd like to know if there's a way to have Vista and TF2


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## RockmasteR (Aug 10, 2007)

*Re: hl2.exe has stopped working, exhausted all options on steam support website*

did you try the dell download page?
Dell E1505 Drivers Page

choose your OS and your Language, press on the "+" besides Video to expand it, download the first one (ATI drivers)


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## Kerstmis (Mar 30, 2009)

*Re: hl2.exe has stopped working, exhausted all options on steam support website*

yea, i tried that earlier

So I got Vista Home Premium and it works fine now, I didn't have to do anything but the automatic updates, so I guess it was a problem with Vista Basic or something

thanks anyway, everyone ray:


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## -WOLF- (Jan 17, 2009)

*Re: hl2.exe has stopped working, exhausted all options on steam support website*

Glad to see that it worked! Yes every version of Vista seems to have some new set of problems with it. I used to have home basic 64-bit, but it was giving me lots of problems, someone told me that upgrading might help, and it did.


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## RockmasteR (Aug 10, 2007)

*Re: hl2.exe has stopped working, exhausted all options on steam support website*

glad to hear that
please mark this thread as solved under thread tools


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