CS:S Freeze On Load Created 17 years ago2007-04-18 19:15:38 UTC by RotatorSplint

I've been having a real problem with CS:S lately where the game is in the process of loading a map, and the progress bar stops at the mid-way point, during 'Loading Resources.' I've had to run the game in windowed mode just so I can close the application once it's frozen instead of force-booting the machine. I've had this problem once with Half-Life 2, but I haven't fired up that game in about a week; I should probably test that game too.

Rebooting seems to be the only way to solve the problem. From what I've seen (I have no idea if this is a simptom or a coincidence), leaving the computer idling for ~1 hour and trying to load the game will result in this problem.

I've done the regular thing; Verify and defrag the GCFs, deleted ClientRegistry.blob, and restarted Steam, all to no avail. Can anyone help me out? :

Does this happen with any map, or just ones you've made?

I've had similar problems with Half Life2 crashing when I've experimented with certain entities. You can crash the whole thing with a bad laser-beam setup, for example. Maybe it's something like that?

If it crashes for all maps though, I'm not sure.

If it's for all CS:S maps try typing mp_dynamicpricing 0 after typing sv_cheats 1.

what would dynamic pricing have anything to do with loading resources from the CSS shared.gcf?

Habboi, you do confuse me at times.

This happened to me when my new firewall wasn't allowing CSS to access that GCF, so you might want to check that.

It has nothing to do with it mate but the same symptoms happened to me and that fixed mine so hush fool before I ask that Valve Hacker to leak your Steam Account to me.

Sorry it took me so long to reply

After a little more testing, I've found it occurs on all CS:S maps, ones I have made, and ones that came with CS:S.

I tried sv_cheats 1 and mp_dynamicpricing 0, which did not work. Sorry Habboi

I also reset my whole router setup to ensure that Steam was connected properly, which also did not work. I was pretty sure this wouldn't solve the problem anyway because I've had internet failure with Steam in Online Mode and the game still functioned properly.

After loading a map and force-quitting about 5 times, it magically began working again =/. I'm going to see if just letting it sit at the loading screen for a really long time does anything, like if the computer is just stumbling around when loading that bit of information. That idea seems a little far fetched to me though.. :

Thanks for the help thus far.

It is certainly true that even minor hard disk problems can have varied and interesting results. As someone who fixes PC's for a living, I have seen many different symptoms of slow hard disk demise.

When HL2 dies because of RAM problems, it complains in an obvious RAM-related way. Since this hasn't happened to you, and because things start working 'if you just leave them for awhile' - I think your HDD might be starting to die a little bit.

Got a backup?

I bought these HDDs at Christmas (The rest of the PC, too). They're set to RAID Striping, so I have no backups at the moment. What % chance do you think this could be the result of a HDD failure?

I've also tested a few more things for you guys. A system restore has not helped at all, nor has updating all graphics card drivers, etc. and so forth. I think the next thing I'm going to try is reinstalling Steam and my games. If that doesn't work, I don't know what I'll do

Oooh, RAID. What setup do you have exactly, 0, 3, 5 or 6 ?

I'm guessing 0.

I've seen brand new high spec disks fail after 2 days. I've seen crappy drives soldier on without problems for more than 10 years. It really is pretty random!

With Raid 0 you gain performance, but there is no benefit in terms of fault tolerance. Indeed, when one disk in a Raid 0 config dies, it makes it harder to recover the other one, as it only has 50% of the data (it's not impossible though)

I suggest you make a backup...

You forgot 1, 2 and 4, LOL.
He said striping, so I'm thinking it's 0.

Will do. It's RAID 0, so I have plenty of room for additional drives.

I may have solved the problem, though. After rooting through the Steam Support pages, I found an article with a way to solve crashes with looping sounds, where you were to delete everything in the Steam directory except for SteamApps and Steam.exe. There must have been something corrupt in there, because since doing that (about 2 hours), every level has loaded properly.

I'll use this thread again if more troubles arise. Thanks for the help

Ahh but Zombieloff, 1, 2 and 4 were ruled out in earlier posts, so I didn't need to ask if he had those configurations ... LOL

Hope it got fixed

It still doesn't work . I had all my CS:S maps load fine, but after loading the 3rd consecutive map in HL2, it froze. I'm going to try reinstalling my entire Steam setup - maybe putting the files elsewhere on the HDD will help... I dunno :

Well, the problem seems to have resolved itself... but now I'm having an other hell of a problem. Any .BSP I put into my maps folder is not avalible for loading in the console. The only way to get a map playable in-game is to put it there through compiling. The map remains avalible for loading and will load properly even when the .bsp has been removed from the maps folder. My pistol model is not replacing the one existing in the .GCF, either. Additionally, all custom content, like testures or models, are not avalible in Hammer.

Is there some sort of 'modification lock' in Half-Life 2 that I should be aware of? This is driving me nuts

EDIT: Damnit, just realized I double-posted

just make a custom mod configured for CS:S, and run all your custom content through that instead.

:

I'd really rather not have to go through the trouble of using a mod just to play-test a texture, or a map, or a model, or anything else I can't think of right now.

I don't understand how this wasn't a problem when I made a fresh install of Steam when I got the PC, and now, after reinstalling Steam and my games, it's magically screwed me over.

Hmm, if you're deleting bsps and then you can still play them, then you must have multiple directories which you are getting confused with. You can't run something that you've deleted, plain and simple, and so therefore there has to be another copy somewhere, which your installation is using.

Either that, or it is a HDD problem.....wierd symptoms though....

Bah, I feel like an idiot. I figured out the problem.

When I made my original instalation of Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike: Source, the root directory was C:/Program Files/Valve/Steam/, but to reinstall Steam, I just used the executable from Steampowered.com (because I was too lazy to get the CDs), which installed Steam to C:/Program Files/Steam/. I never bothered to check the file path because I had assumed it installed to the original directory. Everything works now.

Thanks for your help

Blagh, second double-post

My computer is still freezing on map changes. A friend of mine said that if there's a bad spot on my drives, I should defrag my system to move the files to a new location.

Does this sound like it would help the problem? Any other ideas as to why I'd be having this problem? Should I give up and stab myself in the face?

A 'bad spot' on your drive isn't as simple as it sounds - if you've got game data in bad sectors then yes, it would cause crashes, but defragging will not help because the data is corrupt and simply moving it to another location isn't going to help. You'd end up with just another copy of the same messed up data.

So, I don't think defragging will help, but then again - I am a fan of trying anything which couldn't hurt, just in case --- so go for it. You never know.

There is one foolproof way of proving if it's your hard disk at fault, but it is somewhat long winded, but is guaranteed to give you at least some useful info about what is going on.

Find a hard disk that you know works reliably. Format it and install all your stuff. Run your PC from that hard disk for awhile. Does the problem go away? If yes, then your other disk is faulty, if not then it's something else.

Simple but effective - it takes time but could easily be shorter than trying a hundred other inconclusive tests.

If your disk isn't at fault, then my next prime suspect is the HDD controller on your motherboard. Much worse. Pray it's the disk!

Did you run chkdsk? Might be worth a shot to try and rule out if your drive is causing the problem.

Ohh, sorry guys, I never noticed the replies.

@Playbus: That's what I figured. The problem persisted after defragmentation. I don't have any spare HDDs lying around, but I plan to get a backup drive soon so I can backup some of my work (If I need to get new drives or drop my computer, or something (you never know)).

@Rabid: I ran it yesterday from CMD, and it said it couldn't run in read-only mode. Then I ran it with the /f parameter enabled, which told me that the 'volume is in use. Do you want to schedule a CHKDSK scan on the next bootup? Y/N'. The third time, I tried regular 'CHKDSK' again, and it DID run, deleting a bunch of .INI files.

Then today, I had a series of programs crash, so I decided to reboot, and CHKDSK ran from the boot screen, and froze at the end of the checking. Now whenever I boot up, it prompts me to CHKDSK, and if I skip it and go to the command prompt, I either get a 'read-only' error or 'volume in use' error. What the hell do I do?

I haven't, however, had the freeze problem in my Source games since the CHKDSK scan. I have yet to see if it appears, and if it doesn't, hooray!

Thanks for the help so far