Half Life 2 + Intel 945GM, Core Duo...

I get all excited with being able to play a good game that I haven't completed 10 times over on my laptop, and get to installing The orange Box (Specifically, Half Life 2), just to be greeted by long load times and terrible performance.

But those really are not the problems. Poor performance, easy. Lower settings. Load times? I just wait, it's only when I open the game, not when loading levels...

Anyways. The problem is this: When it comes to loading points/autosave in the game's levels, after it has completed loading, the game just hangs on me. I get the infamous "Encountered a problem and needs to close" error. Seriously annoying, since I hit the games Reccomended system requirements to run the game, yet I can't actually run the game reliably...

I'm running on an Intel 945G chipset (Laptop), with an integrated 128MB Intel 945 Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA), and an Intel Core Duo T2050 1.6Ghz. I've tried looking on Google, and can't find anything to fix it... even Intel's site states that it doesn't know how to fix it.

Help? :<

Well, I'd know better than to use Intel's onboard graphics chip, but try updating the drivers for the graphics and see if it helps.

Is the error in datacache.dll? Switching to the DirectX 8 renderer fixed that for me. Use -dxlevel80 when launching the game to force it to use that renderer, and next time you play, take out that command line parameter so it remembers your settings.

Or you can wait until Half-Life 2 + Episode 1 are updated to the newer Source Engine builds.

The pre-OB Source Engine is a little shifty it seems - your best bet would be to update your sound card and graphics card drivers, and if that doesn't help, use -dxlevel 81 (NOT 80, it removes shaders!).

Uhh, I'm pretty sure dxlevel80 still has shaders. I can see the bump-mapping, water reflections, and the ripples from those bluish Combine barrier things. What you might be thinking of is dxlevel70.

By the way, upgrading drivers is not going to fix problems. datacache.dll is actually an issue with the way data is stored in RAM, I believe. The IDirect3DDevice9::Present() crash also seems to be an issue with the engine, not video drivers.

Well, if it's a problem like that, defragment the cache files and if it doesn't stop doing it, reinstall it.

Clearly you have no knowledge of the actual error. It has absolutely nothing to do with a fragmented cache. I got this error on a clean installation. Someone had analyzed the source code to the game back in 2005 and concluded that it was an issue with the way Source Engine interfaces with hardware. Nevertheless, the newer build for Orange Box seems to at least fix this issue.

To tell the truth, I think I am having somewhat the same problem. I have pretty much the same setup as him, except the fact that it's a desktop computer with Vista on it, and a Intel Pentium D CPU 3.00GHz. When I start up Half-Life 2 Demo and start up a new game, there comes a part in the first cutscene with Gman that my computer starts acting very funny. The sound from the game will stutter constantly, and something called "igfx" is said to have crashed and been restored to normal state. As soon as that shows up, however, my monitor turns off and turns back on, and displays the same message again. This just keeps constantly happening until I bring out Task Manager or restart.
I already looked around for help, and with no success. So, I saw this thread, and thought someone could help. I was hoping to get the Orange Box this year, and if this game dosen't work, I doubt the Orange Box would either. Would this by chance have anything to do with the -dxlevel thing, because they do some special effects in that first cutscene. It would be great if someone could help me out here.

That is unrelated to the datacache.dll problem. What is your video card? Perhaps it is trying to use shaders where your video card does not support them. The screen sort of turns inverted at the first part, which would indicate to me a composite screen-wide shader. If that's where it's crashing, I would use -dxlevel 70. DirectX 7 does not use shaders at all.

That would be a Intel 82945G Express Chipset Family. I was having problems with this video card before with other video card demanding games like Battlefield, but that's a different story. As for the shaders, I would think that it would support them, as the 3D enviorment in the main menu works without a hitch. I'll give the -dxlevel 70 a shot.

From my experience, integrated graphics have very poor compatibility. Often times you'll have objects turning white because the shaders are unsupported, and perhaps even textures erratically applied to the wrong objects. I hear there are newer chips that simulate shaders, but they do this in a way that is very slow (and would also probably have issues with compatibility). If you want to run outside of DirectX 7, I highly recommend getting a dedicated video card.

I have been able to figure out that the igfx thing is actually my display driver, and this is actually a problem that is supposed to be addressed in an update by Microsoft. But, for some strange reason, no versions of the update work on my computer. I tried both versions of the update, along with all the other updates Valve reccomended, only to see that it says that this update is not for your system. They told me to update the computer with this first, yet this isn't going anywhere.

I'm pretty much going to give up with the PC version here. I'm not expecting easy answers here, but I would like some directional help. If I can't get any of this, however, I'm probably just going to get the Xbox 360 version of the game.

Intel Graphics page

Vista Info

Drivers for the "Intel 82945G Express Chipset"

You may have incorrectly identified the chipset number, installed the wrong driver, and that is why it is giving you an errors while running 3D programs

Identifying your Intel graphics controller

try using the Intel Chipset Identification Utility, and the check this list to make sure you know what chipset your computer has.

I think I pretty much have come to a conclusion. I'm pretty sure now that this chipset isn't very good for games, according to what I've read about from other people running into around the same problem.

Therefore, I think I'm just going to go grab a new better video card and call it a day. It seems like too much trouble to try to get a game to work on a card it won't work on.

And Logan_GBA, I looked on there and saw that it dosen't support any updates for Vista except that accelarator driver, which I already have. Thanks for the help though.