Can't play any Source 1 game past five or so minutes without a CTD; no other game has this issue. | Source Engine | Page 1

barren linden Jul 10, 2025, 3:58 AM

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For a few weeks, I've been having issues trying to play all of my Source 1 games in particular. I can test if this still happens with Source 2 titles if requested, but TF2, L4D2, and a fresh install of TF2C all crashed within five minutes of actual gameplay, isolated from however much time I spent in the main menus.

I've tried updating my drivers, playing with -nosound to see if it was a sound cache issue, deleting my custom folders, and trying more general CTD fixes like the OPENSSL_ia32cap Environmental Variable trick, with no luck. I'm on Windows 10 with a reasonably powerful rig (3070 ti, i5-13600k, 16 GB RAM).

Again, no other game has this issue, and it seems to be exclusively isolated to Source games, so I don't think it's a hardware issue. Any advice from here on would be appreciated, thank you all.

peak sail Jul 10, 2025, 12:59 PM

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Check Steam's "dumps" folders for any crash dumps, then send one here

barren linden Jul 10, 2025, 9:10 PM

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Here's a couple from different games in different sessions, not sure how to read these:

📎 crash_tf_win64.exe_20250702172051_1.dmp 📎 crash_left4dead2.exe_20250708045826_1.dmp 📎 crash_hl2.exe_20250708144442_1.dmp

barren linden Jul 11, 2025, 5:08 AM

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peak sail Check Steam's "dumps" folders for any crash dumps, then send one here

Here, by the way!

dapper geyser Jul 12, 2025, 3:44 PM

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barren linden Here, by the way!

try disabling multithreading

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all of these are crashes due to inappropriate access by a thread

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try limiting your threads in a game

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or disabling multithreading

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do like

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-threads 4 or -threads 6 in game launch parameters

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as a test

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and if that doesnt work

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do mat_queue_mode 0

barren linden Jul 12, 2025, 9:51 PM

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dapper geyser do mat_queue_mode 0

None of these seemed to work, but mat_queue_mode 0 seems to give me more time before my game CTDs in general, sometimes? Left 4 Dead 2 didn't crash at all after a few levels, weirdly enough.

dapper geyser Jul 12, 2025, 9:52 PM

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barren linden None of these seemed to work, but mat_queue_mode 0 seems to give me more time be...

because l4d2 is probably the most thread safe out of them

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your pc is triggering some edge case causing a access violation issue

barren linden Jul 12, 2025, 10:01 PM

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dapper geyser your pc is triggering some edge case causing a access violation issue

Any idea how to troubleshoot that? I'm tempted to just turn off multithreading optimization in the nvidia control panel, but I doubt that'll be practical

dapper geyser Jul 12, 2025, 10:02 PM

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barren linden Any idea how to troubleshoot that? I'm tempted to just turn off multithreading o...

does the same issue occur

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with mat_queue_mode 0

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the error

barren linden Jul 12, 2025, 10:05 PM

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dapper geyser does the same issue occur

Here's the .dmp files to look at; mat_queue_mode 0 seemed to make crashes happen after a longer period of time rather than after a few minutes.

📎 crash_hl2.exe_20250712172207_1.dmp 📎 crash_tf_win64.exe_20250712175041_1.dmp 📎 crash_tf_win64.exe_20250712173507_1.dmp

west glen Jul 12, 2025, 10:14 PM

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nvgpucomp64.dll you have an issue with your GPU drivers

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update or downgrade them

barren linden Jul 12, 2025, 10:17 PM

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I updated them recently, so I'll try downgrading with DDU!

barren linden Jul 13, 2025, 12:20 AM

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I downgraded and it seemed to fix things but I realize my issue might be having a 13th gen intel CPU ;")

dry mica Jul 13, 2025, 1:43 AM

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but it's a GPU issue

#Can't play any Source 1 game past five or so minutes without a CTD; no other game has this issue.