Troubleshooting Video Errors

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Common symptoms of video errors include:

System crashes or locks up when attempting to load a game
Blank, black screen when attempting to load a game
Distorted graphics in-game
Video lags in-game

Important Note

There may be other factors causing your games to lock up - please see the instructions in the Using a Firewall with Steam article and the Programs Which Interfere with Steam article to ensure a firewall or background applications are not interfering with Steam.

If you see purple checkerboards, missing weapon models, or missing world models please see the Verifying GCF Cache Files topic for troubleshooting instructions.

Troubleshooting Steps

Please follow the steps below for troubleshooting video and display issues:

Update Drivers - See the Updating Drivers topic for instructions to ensure your system is using the appropriate drivers to communicate with your video card.
Check DirectX Settings - Check DirectX settings and update DirectX to improve graphics display quality.
Reset Video Settings and Force a Video Mode - See the Reset Video Settings and Force a Video Mode topic for instructions to use -autoconfig and experiment with resolution and refresh settings - it is recommended that you start with the lowest resolution your video card and monitor will support, then work your way up until you find a video mode which displays correctly without straining your system's resources.

Unsupported Video Cards

While the following video cards are listed as having DirectX 7.0 hardware support, (the minimum requirement for running Source-engine games) they are not supported:

3DLabs Wildcat VP560
XGI Volari V8 Ultra
Matrox P750
Matrox G400-550
SiS Xaber 400

Retrieved from "http://supportwiki.steampowered.com/wiki/Troubleshooting_Video_Errors"

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