So, I installed the game and ran it, everything worked just fine, played through some of the 1st level, getting out on the plaza outside the train station.

Then saved and shut it down (the game) and went surfing for a while and was going to take it for another spin. I fired it up and the intro passed and the animated game menu (the out of focus thing) was loading and I was all of a sudden dropped back to desktop with the following apocryphical dialog message:

The instruction at "0x241f94f7" referenced memory at "0x0d98f41c". The memory could not be "read"

My system is an AMD dual core 3800 on 1 GB RAM (1 stick). Mobo is a Fatal1ty AN8 SLI thingamajingy with a geforce 6800GS PCIe card 256mb.

bios and drivers are all the latest versions, grafix card ran on latest public then switched to beta drivers hoping it would cure it and then back but no joy.

Read around the net and it seems to be problem quite a few suffer from.

Whats broken and how do I fix it? It s only HL2 suffering from this annoying issue, everything else works just fine and dandy

Hi there and welcome to PCHF,

On first inspection, this would appear to be a clear case of memory fault BUT anyone who has been 'round the HL2 forums would know that this is more likely to be related (simply) to your NVidia Forceware version. Go to nVIDIA Geforce 8800 8600 7950 7900 7600 GT GTX ATi Radeon x2900 x1950 x1900 x1800 1650 XT Pro - Guru of 3D: PC Hardware Reviews and try another driver

Cheers, glad to be here, allthough the reason for it aint that much joy.

I tried various drivers for the grfix card but the game still wont start again. I keep getting the same mesasage over n over at exactly the same place (loading of the game menu). I dont know what to do. Have I bought a **** machine or is it software to blame only?

Did you un-install the program after you changed the driver - delete the Steam/HL2 folder and then re-install?

When I used to play Source engine based games I found memory read errors quite common. A solution I found for ATi cards is turn off "VPU Recovery" in the CCC. Can you do that for Nvidia's too?

Hrmmm...odd - i've read many people have this sort of issue...and it's quite common - but i've never had it (that i remember)...*shrug*

Try deleting your ClientRegistry.blob file in your main Steam directory - deleting this file normally fixes most errors.