Lil halp - Map loads but then gets 'stuck' issue in TF2

[haff]

Hola

specs:
XPS M1530 Crimson Red Casing With Microsatin Finish Intel C2D T7500 (2.2GHz/800Mhz FSB, 4M L2 Cache)
256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT (174 mod drivers installed currently)
3GB, DDR2, 667MHz 2 Dimm, for XPS M1530
15.4 inch Wide Screen WSXGA+ TrueLife LCD with Camera for XPS M1530
320GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive for XPS M1530
Vista Ultimate 32-bit

Issue:
TF2 gets stuck after the map load but before I can join and pick a team etc...

Scenario:
When the map loads and the welcome screen comes along, the audio stutters and the continue button is not clickable, its just this crappy audio looping over and over, teasing and temptingme and urging me to try another time to get back into the fray...I have to Ctrl+Alt+Del and pull up task manager and kill hl2.exe to get back to my desktop. Sometimes I can just relaunch TF2 and join without an issue, other times I have to restart as despite killig the hl2.exe task I get a message saying its still running when I try and launch and give it another go...

Anyone else experience this or know of a fix? Its starting to get annoying, especially on Steak and Beer Fridays.... I can sit here and drink and drink and drink and eat steak and drink some more but I would really like to be playing TF2 with you lot at the same time instead of restarting TF2 over and over again.

HALP

[TheGuy]

Hardware or driver issue. I had that problem with my old motherboard. Thought it was the ram at first but it was because the board was a sis chipset piece of shit.

[haff]

mmm comforting, lol

potential driver issue maybe (hopefully), mod version installed currently. Seem to experience it from time to time regardless of driver, damnit, possible hardware issue then... hmm.. have every possible warranty out the wazzoo so perhaps I can go beat the crap out of dell and get my monies worth

[TheGuy]

I thought it was ram or drivers initially. But it was the board in my case. That doesn't mean it's going to be the board in your case. Could be bad ram. Get memtest86 and run the test for a few hours. Memtest86.com - Memory Diagnostic You could also try moving your ram sticks to different slots and see if the problem persists.

[Aeronaut]

Originally Posted by haff

mmm comforting, lol

potential driver issue maybe (hopefully), mod version installed currently. Seem to experience it from time to time regardless of driver, damnit, possible hardware issue then... hmm.. have every possible warranty out the wazzoo so perhaps I can go beat the crap out of dell and get my monies worth

I've got a pretty close setup on my XPS M1330 and experience the same exact problem... Ridiculously often.

It's not even remotely consistent- the game loads maps the right way about 50% of the time, while on the other 50% the game hits a looping sound freeze after the map loads. For those of you that have seen me join a game and then randomly sit in spec or otherwise disconnect a few seconds later without having done anything, this is why.

I can't tell you how many times I've killed the program/process for TF2 because of this. If you do find out what's causing it (and assuming it's fixable), I'd really like to know the solution you find. I'll also try and keep an eye out for any solutions to the issue myself and will post one here if I do find one. The crashing is annoying to no end.

[TheGuy]

Oh yeah, the crash I previously spoke of only happened in source games which was odd.. Oh wait, it happened in age of mythology as well.