hey i need some help, i just bought a new Hp media center PC. its running the following

PentiumD 820 (S) DC 2.8 GHz with 800 MHz front side bus
Intel 945P chipset
1024 Mb DDR2 RAM
250 GB SATA Hard Drive @ 7200 rpm
Nvidia GeForce 7600GS with 512 DDR memory

When i play half life 2, sometimes it happens during the loading screen of the level or when i start exploring, the screen goes blank and windows comes back up saying that some direct draw or direct something read problem. can anyone help with this? thanks.

Sounds like a cooling issue, or perhaps inadequate memory for the job.
Anything bad happen when you do not connect to half life?
Does your heatsink have adequate thermal paste? Is CPU fan turning at the correct speed? Do you have dust, dirt, and hair in the heat sink vans?
Have your tried downloading the latest driver from the nVidia site, then removing or disabling the current installed driver before installing the new one.
Is your memory Value Ram in two 512 mb modules? If so, you may not have enough speed. Check to see if the memory modules are the same in speed and output.

any suggestions towards wat i should have on my pc to get half life 2 to work properly. and yes the ram is divided into 2 512 chips.

You need great cooling, fast video, and fast memory modules... preferably in 1 GB... nothing that says "Value RAM". You also need a great power supply of 400 Watts or more powerful... with high Amp out put

do i have any of those provided the specs from my first post??

well the thing is that the game actually runs on pcs with configurations much lower than the one i am running, wat about that?

i play half life 2 on my pc all the time

raybay suggested installing the latest graphics driver. Have you done that already (and uninstalled the old one first)?

Lots of people play Half Life 2 on their computer all the time. Without some detailed information, Dustin_ds3000, it isn't helpful to this thread to know what you do on an unknown computer elsewhere.

We do not know what computer brand, model, or configuration Ishilicious has that is giving him trouble.

Now perhaps you would like to help.

Ishilicious' computer has a problem. We don't yet know what that problem is. But it could be memory, unusual cpu temperature, power supply, video card, CMOS, BIOS error, Chipset error, video driver, cpu fan, or defective hard drive. We would like to figger out which it is that is aggravating him and putting his PC at risk.

Now, can you contribute something helpful.

well its an Hp, and its brand new, i mean ive only had it for about a month and a half, so im stuck as to why it doesnt work. i play doom 3 on it all the time, and it runs nicely, but i dont noe, i mean when i play hl2, the graphics dont start getting choppy or anything, but before i can do anything meaningful in the game, this happens, so im very confused..

HP has very good and helpful tech support... by phone... give them a call and get some help. You may have a defective unit. If so, they will ship you a new one in five days, and you can send the old one back.

well wouldnt that be odd that other games run just fine but hl2 doesnt run? i mean wats so incredibly different about it that it wouldnt run?

It's not odd at all. That's why they come out with new drivers periodically to fix problems in various games and applications. Not all games or applications are affected, just some and in different ways. If you ever read the driver release notes as to what was fixed and known but unfixed problems, you would get a better idea of how sporadic gaming problems are.