Game Crash: Games freeze or crash with looping sounds

http://support.steampowered.com/cgi-bin/steampowered.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=150

SoundBlaster Problems

If you have a soundcard (not a chip on the motherboard) what PCI slot is your soundcard plugged into?

SoundBlaster soundcards are infamous for not performing well on the lower slots (beyond slot 3 on most PCI buses). Other cards may also have problems. Try moving the card closer to the graphics card, or if it's already as close as it can get, then try moving the card down a slot or two.

On-Board Soundchips

If you have an on-board soundchip, there are several web reports seem to indicate there are problems with some on-board sound chip drivers causing this problem, here is one:

http://www.abxzone.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-34588.html

For both onboard and PCI soundcards there are a few things to try and eliminate this problem.

• Get the latest drivers for your motherboard and for your sound card
• Make sure you have all the latest O/S updates installed from Microsoft (windows update).
• Be sure to get the latest DirectX version installed as well.

Don't Run Both

If you have a sound chip on your motherboard and you upgrade to new PCI audio card, you must uninstall the old drivers and then disable the on-board soundchip in your BIOS settings before installing the new card.

Try Turning off the Sound

Try disabling the sound card in the device manager: right-click on the sound card and select "disable", you can reable it later once we see if it helps or not. On-board soundchips can usually be disabled in the BIOS.

For HL2 games you can also add:

-nosound

In your game launch properties and see if that prevents the crash. Don't use this for HL1 games, it might cause a problem when you play online. You'll have to disable your soundcard(s) in the device manager for HL1 game troubleshooting.

I know it's no fun to play without sound, but try it for a while just to see if the problem is still there.

If the problem goes away then you know something related to your sound card or sound card drivers is causing the problem.

Contact Manufacturer

If after installing all the latest drivers and O/S updates you still have this problem, you might try contacting your motherboard manufacturer and see what their recommendations are, especially for on-board soundchips.

DirectX Acceleration

You can also turning down or disabling the DirectX Sound Acceleration.

You do this by going to your start button: Start > Run > DXDIAG <enter>

Then go to the Sound Tab and turn off hardware acceleration, then exit and run the game and see if there is any change. If the problem goes away then you can go back and move the acceleration up a step at a time until the problem starts happening again .. then reduce the acceleration one step.

Two last things, 1.for HL1 games, in the game sound options, make sure that EAX and A3D options are UNCHECKED. 2. There are reports that some sound codecs can cause this problem, specifically: k-litemegacodeckpack