Left 4 Dead Pc

[DK412]

processor - fine
Ram - shaky add another 1GB
HD - fine
GPU - Need to know info
MOBO - need to know info
OS - Ok

Please try and find your Graphics card and motherboard info. Type msconfig into the run box and hit the startup tab. Look for Nvidia or ati somewhere. You should be able to cross refrence the driver with the internet and find out which card it is.

EDIT: open your comp and see what the card is

Dude seriously WTF? Now you have him cracking the case just to find the GPU? Go to start, go to run, type dxdiag, copy and paste what is on the system tab and the display tab. WTH!?!?! crack the case... damn... msconfig will just get him startup programs and messing around with services.

Do I think you are lucky never having a driver problem? Which incidentally is a piece of software. No I don't, I am fairly positive given your troubleshooting technique so far, that you wouldn't even know that you are having a driver problem if you saw one.

These are the Left 4 Dead minimum system requirements:

Operating System: Windows Vista, XP or 2000
CPU: 3.0 GHz P4, Dual Core 2.0 or AMD64X2 (or higher)
RAM: 1 GB for XP / 2GB for Vista
Disc Drive: DVD-ROM Drive
Hard Drive: At least 7.5 GB of free space
Video Card: Direct X 9 compatible (must be 256 MB or more with support for pixel shader 2.0)
Sound Card: Direct X9.0c compatible

CPU: intel pentium 4 3.2GHz
RAM:1GB
HD:320GB
GPU: GeForce 7300 LE
MOBO: I dont know still. I'm not sure how to find that
OS:Windows XP

 

[Weaver]

WHEN do you get the error? On boot? On server connect? On exit? During gameplay? Only as survivors? Only as infected? What, give us some damn info.

What is the error? Screen shot it then post it here.

If you pirated the game come clean.

 

[DK412]

It did prompt me to update my drivers, but still allowed me to play, so I thought it didn't make that much difference. But NVIDIA seem to have released new drivers in the past few days. Someone helped me begin to download new drivers, I'll tell you how it goes when they are downloaded

 

[DK412]

I didn't pirate the game, as I've said already, i bought it about a week ago, and I click it, it says its loading and then the microsoft error appears.

 

[theCMNDER]

This is sort of off topic but I can tell you he didn't pirate the game. We bought it in store from GAME (totally rip off prices but we wanted to play it that evening) along with another mate of ours and I even had to lend him £10 because he didn't have enough money on him. We have been playing it 3 player and got through the first 3 campaigns but on the day we decided to start the fourth he got this error.

We realise we don't know all that much about computers and that makes information he can give vague but that's why he's asking for help! If he knew all about computers he wouldn't be asking. We are more console gamers than PC gamers but we have PS3's so that's why we got L4D on PC and why he needs some help. So can you stop just saying he pirated it when he did not. If you can help - Awesome! - if not there's no need to blame him for something he didn't do.

EDIT: But Kier, learn to use the edit button Double post = fail.

 

[DK412]

Paha, thankyou for that. I forget to edit quite often...But yeah what he said ^^

 

[Gladion]

I didn't pirate the game, as I've said already, i bought it about a week ago, and I click it, it says its loading and then the microsoft error appears.

Does it appear before the main menu pops up or before the campaign starts? (Like you get into the view of your character)

Edit: Did you check Valve's forums yet, if someone else had this exact problem? Trying that had helped me once.

 

[DK412]

I didn't pirate the game, as I've said already, i bought it about a week ago, and I click it, it says its loading and then the microsoft error appears.

Does it appear before the main menu pops up or before the campaign starts? (Like you get into the view of your character)

Edit: Did you check Valve's forums yet, if someone else had this exact problem? Trying that had helped me once.

It appears as soon as it begins running, it loads for ages and then just comes up with the error, and I haven't checked the steam forums, I'll do that now.

 

[kawligia]

Could it be bad RAM or bad sectors on his HD?

L4D was crashing for me all the time. I ran Memtest and found one of my sticks was bad. I took it out and now everything is just fine.

 

[DK412]

It just confuses me how I was able to play it perfectly fine for about 3 or 4 days, before this problem occurred.

 

[Laughing Man]

Well you've all managed to totally miss the basics here.

First the game worked perviously and doesn't work now so unless he's installed new hardware getting him to list his hardware is kinda of a waste of time.

Second he's stated he's getting a generic Windows error message. He's also listed the error message comments but no one has asked him to click the view more details link that the error message will have on it.

I assume you are getting a message some what like this one

See the bit that's circled, click that and it will bring up a whole host of info post. Now you got two options you can then head over to the Microsoft website and use the search function there and stick the error details in and see what it brings up. You can do the same over at the Steam forums and see if anyone else has had the same issue or you can post here but judging by the posts above all you'd get is a headache and just about that.

You can also do the following to get more details

Click Start --> Control Panel --> Administrative Tools --> Event Viewer --> System

This will bring up a list of system activity on the right hand panel. This list will contain everything the system has done recently, what you're specifically looking for is ones with either a yellow ! but more likely it will be one in a red circle with a white cross in the middle. Double click it and read the description of the error. The details should allow you to determine if the error was caused by L4D and it will provide a link that will take you directly to Microsoft's support centre.

 

[DK412]

Could it be bad RAM or bad sectors on his HD?

L4D was crashing for me all the time. I ran Memtest and found one of my sticks was bad. I took it out and now everything is just fine.

I tried going on the steam forums, and it actually won't let me, I created an account, and it doesn't work :S. Is there any way anyone could ask the question for me?...bit of a silly request, but it appears to be the only way...

 

[Seann]

That's the message it gives pirates.

Not just any pirates, the ones who are terrible at it.


So go away Terrible Pirate.

Actually I got the same message with Team Fortress 2, which I only bought 2 days previous. I tried reinstalling, to no avail. I then tried reinstalling Steam which solved my problem.

 

[DK412]

Alright, I'll try reinstalling steam next.

I swear I always get problems with PC games, grrr.

 

[DK412]

Ok, I uninstalled steam and L4D. It's trying to do steam updates, but says "Cannot connect to steam network, please try again later" Is this really common? or is it possible its got something to do with my predicament

 

[DK412]

Well you've all managed to totally miss the basics here.

First the game worked perviously and doesn't work now so unless he's installed new hardware getting him to list his hardware is kinda of a waste of time.

Second he's stated he's getting a generic Windows error message. He's also listed the error message comments but no one has asked him to click the view more details link that the error message will have on it.

I assume you are getting a message some what like this one

See the bit that's circled, click that and it will bring up a whole host of info post. Now you got two options you can then head over to the Microsoft website and use the search function there and stick the error details in and see what it brings up. You can do the same over at the Steam forums and see if anyone else has had the same issue or you can post here but judging by the posts above all you'd get is a headache and just about that.

You can also do the following to get more details

Click Start --> Control Panel --> Administrative Tools --> Event Viewer --> System

This will bring up a list of system activity on the right hand panel. This list will contain everything the system has done recently, what you're specifically looking for is ones with either a yellow ! but more likely it will be one in a red circle with a white cross in the middle. Double click it and read the description of the error. The details should allow you to determine if the error was caused by L4D and it will provide a link that will take you directly to Microsoft's support centre.

I copied and pasted this detail into google and found that some people had the same problems, but all of their ideas seem so major to me.

This was the error signature i had: AppName: left4dead.exe AppVer: 0.0.0.0 ModName: shaderapidx9.dll

 

[Quick Ben]

Ok, I uninstalled steam and L4D. It's trying to do steam updates, but says "Cannot connect to steam network, please try again later" Is this really common? or is it possible its got something to do with my predicament

Did you allow Steam and L4D through your firewall after you reinstalled it? Might be necessary...

 

[DK412]

I didn't get any prompts for it, it was just installing as always. And then when it got to steam updates it said it couldn't connect to the network, perhaps the update server is down or something?

 

[Laughing Man]

Did a quick search on Google myself and it seems Source games and issues with the shaderapidx9.dll are quite common.

Found this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRcFfFxigpE

It seems to be a possible resolution to this issue and since it's a video and dead simple it shouldn't take that long to try it out. If it doesn't work then it may take a little more work to get it resolved.

 

[DK412]

Did a quick search on Google myself and it seems Source games and issues with the shaderapidx9.dll are quite common.

Found this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRcFfFxigpE

It seems to be a possible resolution to this issue and since it's a video and dead simple it shouldn't take that long to try it out. If it doesn't work then it may take a little more work to get it resolved.

I'll try it tomorrow when I'm more awake and tell you the results thanks again