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Basically my tf2, as well as any other hl2 engine game, keeps crashing on startup. They crash at the point where the game should launch in fullscreen and when the “preparing to launch team fortress 2” dialog disappears. The problem started this morning, and tf2 worked fine last night. I assume that the problem has to do with the source engine patch.
The possible list of causes has already been narrowed down to software/hardware problem by Rebeli. Stuff I’ve attempted to far include, but is not limited to: restarting windows, deleting clientregistry.blob, -autoconfig, re-installing tf2, re-installing steam, re-downloading tf2, deleting team fortress 2 folder, disabling steam cloud, disabling steam community ingame, changing dxlevel and tweaking around with a bunch of launch options in general, updating graphics drivers, updating windows, turning off my antivirus and firewall, launching with one screen enabled, launching with the other screen enabled, launching with a different desktop resolution and… That’s it pretty much, might’ve forgotten something. Also, specs:
E8400 w/ boxed cooler @ 3ghz(default)
MSI p45-neo
ati radeon asus 4870 512mb
Kingston 800mhz ram 5-5-5-20, 4 gigs

Halp plz?

Tried all of those, forgot to mention -windowed. Might be a problem unrelated to the source patch, as I pirated an old version of portal (no-steam) to test it with, gave me the same error. Oddly enough, any other game I’ve thought of so far have worked without any problems.

Since you have an ATI card – do you have ATI tray tools installed and running? If you do there’s a known bug where it causes a lot of games to crash on start up. Close it down before you run tf2 and see if that helps.