Graphics card crash with Half Life 2

[Nbbear]

Hello. I am currently running Windows Vista with the NVIDIA Geforce 8600M GS graphics card on my brand new laptop. All of my drivers are updated, and I have the latest windows hotfixes. While playing TF2 or sometimes Half Life 2, my game will suddenly "crash" and my screen will become shards of black and white. I say "crash" because I am still able to hear myself when I shoot, or zoom or anything else, but I am unable to see anything, let alone access menus, and the only way to exit the program is to ctrl+alt+del and end the program. I believe it to be a graphics card issue although I am unsure what to do, since my card is brand new and supports Shader 4 graphics, it should be more than enough. I completed Portal with no problems whatsoever. Does anyone have an idea? I have more than enough processing power, but maybe memory could cause this problem as well? I know that the memory my laptop has is shared, not dedicated, but I try to make sure nothing else is running when playing these games. Sometimes I can play Team Fortress 2 for hours with no problems, and other times I play for 15 minutes before a crash occurs. Thanks in advance for your time, patience and consideration.

[Fozzy]

I get exactly the same problem, only in TF2 and HL2.

I also get other crashes though, TF2 HL2 and Portal all crash every now and again...they freeze up and loop abot half a second of sound. I cant escappe to OS, it completely locks up. It could be overheating but its a brand new laptop!

[sypher704]

heh its not the graphics card, maybe in combination with vista i have no idea, or its a bad card, but you said only like it ran other things fine. all i know is i ran hl2 to the exact same effect a few years ago with an intel integrated graphics processor, and could run it happily on low settings on a geforce 2 until present date.

[ozo]

Hi. I just wanted to reply to find out if you got this problem sorted as I'm getting the exact same symptoms during HL2 DeathMatch and it's stopping me from playing this excellent game!

Cheers in advance.

[Nbbear]

Unfortunately, no. I never found a solution to that problem. Half Life 2 played fine, never crashed on me once, not even a graphical problem of any kind. I stopped playing Team Fortress 2 due to the seemingly random crashes. One thing I noticed upon one crash was that when I ctrl+alt+deleted I had that little yellow "memory is critical" triangle in the bottom right corner. I think that's what was causing it. I now have a desktop that runs everything fine. :-/ Sorry I couldn't be of more help. Take care.