First of all, i'm a first time poster here (love the site btw) and i'd like to say hey

and 2ndly this seems like the only place i can post my problem without getting flamed

I'm tryin to run Half life 2 on win2k3, but i get errors randomly either when starting it up, in the middle of play or on exit, its a blue screen, and i have to restart my pc!!!

it says Bad_pool_caller

i have no clue what to do, as anyone could see, plz help

my current hardware config is:

Ati Radeon 8500

Asus k8v Delux

AMD Athlon 64 3200

1024 meg of pc 3200 mem

(i use the onboard sound and lan)

and all my drivers are new and up-to-date

Hi eighto2,

Welcome to MSFN forum

That's a great hardware config. But also telling what version of DirectX you have would help. If you don't already have dX9c, download/install it. And then enable hardware graphics acceleration to "full".

But seriously, you shouldn't expect much for gaming on win2k3 - XP is more suited to that sort of task.

its 9.0c, and yes i know xp would be more compatible, but when i use xp wit only my virus scan and mirc open, compared to 2k3 wit just my virus scan open my memory usage on xp is like 36% compared to 26 on 2k3 maybe i'll just install xp *sigh*

Integrate SP2 into XP CD, disable unnecessary services, cut-out the effects, (and use nLite to remove useless components like WMP, WindowsMessenger) - and then you see XP is one hell of a **** fast OS.

On my home PC, XPSP2 installed takes up just about 60 MB of RAM normally. Applications/games when running, will of course use more - but I've not found it to be slow at all!

nlite eh? alrite i'll give it a try...

like prathapml said its relatively easy to get the commit charge down to more manageable levels. plus you have a gig of ram what are you worried for ?

k, i'm back on xp now, used that nlite...AMAZING program

here's what i'm at now: Usage: 258/1023MB (25.22%)

258's still a little high for me

eh?

What are you running, anyway? I don't ever get to such high memory consumption.

Of course, when running VMware or UT2004, lot of RAM is used, but otherwise usage is very less.

Try closing the apps you don't use or don't need.

mirc and nod32

Hello,

I've managed to get HL2 working in Server 2003 somehow (for now). It'll just lower the chances of the BAD_POOL_CALLER error:

1. Right-click HL2 in 'Play Games'

2. Click 'Properties'

3. Click 'Launch Options'

4. Add in '- heapsize <your RAM>'

Good luck!

*<your RAM> is your physical memory total in your task manager.

its to late i'm on xp now...

Hello,

I've managed to get HL2 working in Server 2003 somehow (for now). It'll just lower the chances of the BAD_POOL_CALLER error:

1. Right-click HL2 in 'Play Games'

2. Click 'Properties'

3. Click  'Launch Options'

4. Add in '- heapsize <your RAM>'

Good luck!

*<your RAM> is your physical memory total in your task manager.

that cant be good.. if you set heap size to your full amount wont it try to use all of your ram aka start swapping to vm because windows has used x amount of ram already?

Well, another way people do it is to divide the RAM by two and subtract 64. I've tried that but I'd still get crashes.