Halo PC/CE Exception Error Madness

[Shinei]

So, being a Halo fan, I enjoy my multiplayer madness over the internet, and keep current by installing Halo Custom Edition (Gearbox-supported and effectively version 1.05 of Halo PC). Ok, ok, whatever. Runs fine, looks good, etc.

A few days ago, my game suddenly started rendering bizarre artifacts during a game of Halo CE, much like it did when I had my Ti4200 overclocked while running Halo PC.
Sample (I underclocked back to stock as soon as I saw those artifacts, and things were good again.)
I figure it's no big deal, because it goes away after the map changes. So, then, the next day, I attempt to start up Halo PC (version 1.04) single player, just to, you know, kill lots of Covenant. Game starts, gets a few minutes into the game--Blam, exception error and a crash to the desktop. "Man, what'd I do wrong?" Go through my settings (10x7, everything on and maxed), nothing's out of the ordinary, try it again--Same deal.
Figuring Halo PC is just being retarded, I go to try Halo CE. I click on any option on the menu and get sent to my desktop with an exception error. Repeated my attempt to play, same story.

The only new things in my system are an Audigy 2 ZS with proper drivers, and a Samsung SyncMaster 997DF 19" CRT monitor with proper drivers. The rest of the system is:
2800+ AMD Athlon XP (Barton), 200x11
1024MB Mushkin Level-I PC3500 (200MHz, 2-3-3-11 timings)
GigaByte GA-7N400 Pro2 motherboard (nForce 2 chipset, onboard audio/LAN disabled)
PNY Ti4200 (64MB aperture)
NetGear 10/100 ethernet card
Windows XP SP1

I figured I'd come and ask the Anandtech guys before I called up Microsoft's tech support to tell them that they can't write a single program without stealing working code from someone else... I tried to get some help on the Gearbox forums, but nobody seems to pay attention to the exception error complaints anymore, so my topic was utterly ignored.

(Finally, this seems like the best place to put my request for assistance, but if it's wrong, move it to where it's supposed to be, please. )

Edit: Forgot to mention my operating system, possibly the most important part of the problem!

 

[Shinei]

Combination bump and update on some settings I'm running in Halo. (This thread's on the third page already, man you guys post a lot! )

Sound settings are maxed out, EAX enabled. (I figure, I'm running an Audigy 2 with a 3200+, I should be able to get that kind of audio without a problem, right?)
Video settings are 10x7, 100Hz refresh rate, fixed 30fps (it crashes with all settings, the last time I tried it I set it to 30fps), decals/specular/shadows/particles all high/on/max.

I've uninstalled and reinstalled both Halo PC and Halo CE multiple times, and it doesn't stop the errors from occurring, so that's not the answer. I tried installing it on a second hard drive (WDC2500JB), but it still crashes when I run it from my WDC1600JB (my main drive). I have a fresh installation of WinXP on my WDC2500JB, but I haven't attempted to boot into Windows on that drive and run Halo from there; somehow I doubt that my solution lies in something as simple as a hard drive swap.

 

[Safeway]

Did the problem occur before you installed the soundcard? If not, boom. Driver issues can be severe and toss out exceptions like candy at a parade. Try uninstalling the soundcard and drivers. If your mobo has onboard sound, that could be an issue too. It could still be enabled? Did you clean the drivers from your last soundcard? Onboard or add-in have drivers that should have been properly and completely removed.

Sound could be it. Can you play other games with the same sound settings?

 

[Shinei]

Yes, Max Payne 2 works just fine with the new hardware (as a matter of fact, it actually added some performance because the CPU doesn't have to do audio processing). I've already disabled and uninstalled the drivers for the nForce onboard audio. I had to switch hard drives because in my zeal to kill off display drivers and sound drivers (in safe mode, so I could replace them with theoretically uncorrupted ones), I killed the primary display adapter, rendering my entire installation of WinXP on that drive useless. So I'm going to try the games on my second drive (WDC2500JB, WinXP SP1 with all the patches) and see if that fixed the problem.

 

[Shinei]

Update: Still crashing out, and I forgot to mention that AvP2 does it as well. For some reason (thankfully), Max Payne 2 is exempt from the arbitrary crashing in a 3d application.

 

[tinyabs]

I had a Creative 2 sound card. It was doing fine with Halo until I updated the driver from Creative website. All I got was exception error no matter how to start it. The updated Creative driver also had issues with my Colin McRae 04.

I uninstall the Creative driver and uses my NForce2 onboard audio, everything works again. That's my story.

 

[Shinei]

The reason I upgraded from the onboard is because the southbridge puts out a ton of noise in the audio lines whenever the system temperature gets too high. Basically, if I played a game, I lost my right channel and my left channel got flooded with static...
But you say that Creative's latest drivers cause an error with Halo? Hmm... Maybe there's an updated driver fix on their site?

Oh, and it may be a temperature issue, because the system starts giving me problems when the temp goes above 64C (basically, playing Halo for ten minutes). I plan on getting another case fan to supplement the single rear exhaust fan and see if that fixes the problem; I also plan on getting a new video card to see if that fixes the problem (and to get a performance boost in DX9 games! gg 6800U).

 

[Shinei]

Installed the latest Creative drivers (from March 2004). I don't know if sound is the problem or not, since when I check the error report that Windows sends to Microsoft, it says that the offending file is vorbis.dll, which I imagine to be a sound-related file (Vorbis .ogg). On the other hand, I only run into excessive problems when I try to run my sound settings above "normal", "medium", and "no hardware acceleration" (which means no EAX or using hardware buffers).

And the video card may be the other part of the culprit, since it's beginning to generate artifacts worse than when it was overclocked whenever I play for a few minutes... I bumped the AGP voltage to 1.6 to see if I could try to stabilize it, but that only staved it off for a few minutes at the most. I'm fairly certain that I'm going to need to replace my video card, but whether or not that'll fix the vorbis.dll problem, I don't know.