Half-Life 2 Help!!!

[Breed625]

I recently Reformatted my computer and in the process of installing a lot of my games, i found everything working correctly except Half-Life 2.

I installed the game perfectly, but when i enter the program the Valve guy with the valve for an eye pops up (no problem), it then says loading.

and bam.

i get a Video Mode Warning saying,
"Failed to Set Video mode - resetting to default. Game will now start with the new video settings." {OK} {Cancel}

After clicking OK the next 3 times a Video Mode Error pops up, it says,
"Failed to set video mode. This game has a minimum requirement of DirectX 7.0 Compatible hardware."

I have directX 9.0c.

I decided to uninstall the game, and then reinstall it just to find the same problem. Even when istalling it, the game recognizes that i have DirectX 9.0b or higher, so it refrains from installing the drivers.

Am I doing something wrong? Before i reformatted the game worked great, but now its not even working.

If anyone has any ideas of what i could do please let me know.

 

[Grayfox]

Install your video card drivers.

 

[macdawg]

grayfox is correct IMO. I had that same problem with Far Cry after I reformatted my PC one time. After I updated video card drivers the problem went away.

 

[SteEL]

Upgrade ur videocard drivers as well as motherboard drivers.Check dxdiag for any problems.

 

[Breed625]

I tried updating all my drivers for both my video card and motherboard. I'm fully updated and i still have the same problem.

I'm not sure where i went wrong.

I'm not sure if this would work, im not real good with compturs, but is there a way to uninstall direct x.

And then if I re-install Half-Life2 and have the direct x program installer that is in Half-Life install directx for me. And see if that works.

Could it?

Here within a month im going to upgrade to a better videocard.
are there any recomendations?

my computer stats are

Pentuim 4 3.2
Asus P4P800S
1.5 gig ram. Corsair.
120 Gig hard drive.
GForce FX 5200 (needs replaced.)

I was wondering if upgrading to a new and better videocard, if that might fix my problem as well.

Any advice on anything is appreciated.

 

[Private_Shon]

i don't know but maybe ur graphics card doesen't support direct x 9.0c but i have a really old card and it runs fine just not on full settings.

An Opinion (Mine)

Switch to ATI

 

[Ridlyn]

no, i have that same card and my card supports DirectX9.0c, im also upgrading my card too.

 

[ThE_MarD]

Heyyo,

The fx5200 supports dx9, but that's useless since the card can barely crank out visuals without the framerate dying on ya.

By the sounds of it you're running the default windows drivers man. go to www.nvidia.com and get their latest forceware drivers or whatever they call em' now.

Also, read some guides into how to run half life 2 in directx 7 mode, your framerate should be better if you do.

 

[h0me5k1n]

I had this same problem with a newly built PC just yesterday.

I installed the latest Nvidia drivers (77.72) but that was what caused the problem. Try going back to the 71.89 driver - it worked for me! Although CSS prompts you that there is a driver update - it's not compatible!!! [sarcasm] I luv Valve [/sarcasm]

There should be no problem with using that card - I put a 64MB GeForce MX 420 in a machine (2.4Ghz P4/512mb RAM) yesterday and with the graphics configuration tweaked for maximum FPS I can get over 70FPS on the stress test and from 40-100+FPS in game. It don't look as pretty as it could but it's much more playable than with the default graphics settings which lag it out too much.