Steam games locking up during game play


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I recently got back into playing some of my Steam games, but I'm experiencing an issue where during the middle of game play, the game freezes. The only way to fix the issue is to minimize the game window and bring it back up, which of course by then I'm dead, which is no only affecting my gameplay, but my teams as well as I cannot contribute.

Anyone have any ideas?

I have tried defragging my hard drive and the files (through the Steam app), I have reinstalled the local cache, I even went back to a backup from last year when I was playing on a regular basis and none of that helped. I even tried reinstalling Windows Vista (x64) to see if maybe something on my install was corrupt, but none of that worked though.

The only thing I can think of is my connection; either my router or my NIC card are bad or going bad?

Is it possible that it could be a memory issue? I know it isn't my hard drive because I have four of them and when I put my image back on, I put it on a different hard drive, so that should rule out any hard drive failure that I might be having.

[edit] So since I posted this, my screen started getting artifacts when playing the game, which is new.

TF2_sreenartifacts.png

Edited by Hurmoth
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Yeah, I am hard wired though. I am having wireless issues, however, which is why I was thinking it was an issue with my router, but now that I'm getting artifacts on my screen, it suggests memory issue IMO.

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Yeah, I am hard wired though. I am having wireless issues, however, which is why I was thinking it was an issue with my router, but now that I'm getting artifacts on my screen, it suggests memory issue IMO.

Or possibly that your gfx card is on the way out

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Artifacts is definitely a sign of a overheating GPU. Give it a dust, or RMA that card as soon as possible.

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Artifacts is definitely a sign of a overheating GPU. Give it a dust, or RMA that card as soon as possible.

Well that sucks, it is a fairly new card too. Just got it last Oct :( It is a NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT.

Here's my temps during game play when this happens:

Temperatures:

Motherboard 32 ?C (90 ?F)

CPU 34 ?C (93 ?F)

CPU #1 / Core #1 38 ?C (100 ?F)

CPU #1 / Core #2 37 ?C (99 ?F)

CPU #1 / Core #3 33 ?C (91 ?F)

CPU #1 / Core #4 33 ?C (91 ?F)

GPU Diode 50 ?C (122 ?F)

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Well that sucks, it is a fairly new card too. Just got it last Oct :( It is a NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT.

Here's my temps during game play when this happens:

Temperatures:

Motherboard 32 ?C (90 ?F)

CPU 34 ?C (93 ?F)

CPU #1 / Core #1 38 ?C (100 ?F)

CPU #1 / Core #2 37 ?C (99 ?F)

CPU #1 / Core #3 33 ?C (91 ?F)

CPU #1 / Core #4 33 ?C (91 ?F)

GPU Diode 50 ?C (122 ?F)

Hmm. Those temps are pretty normal for the GPU. Does it only happen in TF2? Can you try something intensive such as 3DMark06/Vantage and see if artifacts appear?

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From my experience, those artifacts are tell-tale signs of an overheating video card (specifically the video RAM). Your GPU shouldn't be affected which is why you see normal temperatures for it. Also, locking up is another sign of overheating video card RAM. Unfortunately, bad video RAM is hard to replace. You're better off replacing the video card than attempting to fix it by reapplying the RAM heatsinks or replacing the RAM chips completely.

What you should do next is test other games. The artifacts should show up in just about every 3D game you run. If it doesn't show up, then it could be an issue specific to Team Fortress 2.

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So I played Day of Defeat: Source and it showed up in that, but then I played Half-Life 2: Episode Two and it didn't show up in there. Not sure what that means :unsure:

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Maybe your memory is going corrupt. Every time you minimize a Source game it reloads when you bring it back up.

try a memtest x86

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Just out of curiosity: Have you installed a custom cooler for your card?

Anaron brought up a good point about RAM heatsinks. If there's a custom cooler on your card, chances are you had to install several RAM heatsinks. Perhaps one or a few of them fell off.

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Hmmm. It's odd that it doesn't show up in Half-Life 2: Episode Two. I still think your video RAM is overheating. Run Memtest86+ to see if your system RAM is faulty. Often times, a video card stores data onto your system RAM. And for whatever reason, corruptions could arise during that storing process.

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I get lock ups during steam games. But thats only when Steam is being queer and keeps connecting and disconnecting :)

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Well there is definitely a memory issue. I ran memtest and almost immediately started throwing up errors.

I rebooted and got an RMA started, and also decided to go ahead and upgrade from 4GB to 8GB :D

Side note: now I'm getting random BSODs and they are pointing to memory issues as well. Of course there still could be a video card issue, but one thing at a time right :p

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Yep, one thing at a time indeed. Hopefully, replacing your system RAM will get rid of the issue. If not, then we know it was caused by a faulty video card and system RAM.

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