Source Game Errors

OK GUYS, I'VE DISCOVED THE PROBLEM AND SOLUTION! HERES WHAT I HAVE FOUND! TRUST ME, READING THIS WILL NOT BE A WASTE OF TIME!

Alright, first off, the program that is causing the error is ATI's Catalyst. Here's my story. I discovered that there was a new 7.3 Catalyst, and decided to try installing it to see if it would fix the problem. I downloaded it, and then updated, but the Catalyst upgrade did absolutly nothing. I mean by the fact that it did not install anything new. I was confused when I opened my Catalyst Control Center, and it showed my old version (7.2) of Catalyst. I decided to uninstall the Catalyst Control Center, and to try installing 7.3 again. Guess what, the 7.3 upgrade does not include the Catalyst Control Center, so now I don't have the Control Center. HOWEVER, I decided to try my Half-Life 2 demo (as a test to see if source would work, since I have discovered that the IDirect3DDevice9:: Present() error is source related). It did not crash with directx 9. I then tryed my Dark Messiah. Usually, it would crash 10 seconds of my checkpoint that I last saved. However, this time, I managed to play Dark Messiah for 10 hours, as of right now, straight without any errors what so ever.

In conclusion, I have discovered the solution to the problem. It is either one of three things:

Either closing Catalyst Control Center (not uninstalling, just closing the program) fixes it, uninstalling the Catalyst Control Center fixes it, or 7.3 fixes the problem (which I doubt, even though I never tried it with Control Center).

Now for an explaination of the problem and why the many other (so called) temperary solutions on this forum topic worked for a while.

The problem is most likely due to the high graphical detail of Source. While playing Half-Life 2, the game would crash with the error only when a high graphical part of the game came, like mass explosions or graphical cutscenes, that would require alot of... graphics to be able to handle. The Catalyst, I assume, is not able to process Source correctly, and the Directx in Catalyst would be unable to process itself, resulting in the error. This is the reason the only people effected by this error is people with Radeon graphic cards, since Radeon uses Catalyst!

This is the reason to why the many other solutions posted on the forum worked... for a while. One solution I saw was that reducing the directx level worked. Another is reducing the video settings for graphical effects to low or medium. This is because it would cause the graphics to reduce, lowering the chance of meeting those high graphic scenes in the game. Another solution I saw was switching from Catalyst drivers to Omega drivers. This is obvious a workable fix, since Omega drivers require you to uninstall Catalyst, fixing the problem!

You can try testing around it to see what the real solution is, but if you are really eager to play whatever Source game you want to play (yes, all Source games are effected to this error), then just play it safe and uninstall Catalyst Control Center. If it does not work, then try uninstalling the driver, then installing it back using the Windows Device Manager in the Control Panal (I don't know about you, but it's there for my Vista). Just go find your Radeon, and click the install/update driver button when you click on it in the Device Manager. Good luck trying to fix the problem!

I think that would have been good 2 years ago. Unless someone else with the same problem needs it, then you bumped a thread and people here don't like bumped threads.