I have a a really troublesome problem with the games I have purchased from Steam. Randomly, my game will freeze and the sound will stutter for about 10 to 15 seconds, then it goes back to playing without the sound stuttering. Very rarely this causes a crash, and even rarer a Blue Screen, but almost all the time one of three things will happen...
One, textures will get changed to really weird colors or patterns. One time my MP7 in HL2 had a grass texture all over it, other times it looks like concrete, and sometimes it just turns pink or something. It's not just my weapon. Buildings, cars, NPCs, items, the ground, and the skybox will get their own textures and colors forgeted up too.
The second thing that may happen is that a random game texture will cover my screen. For example, about an hour ago I was playing Left 4 Dead 2, and when this happened, a texture file completely obscured my HUD and sight with what looked like various blood and bullet hole images. One time it was a Charger face skin, which scared the forget out of me when it unfroze.
The third thing that might happen, with a very low chance, is that nothing will appear to change, but my game will drop significantly in framerate. What I currently do to fix these things is Alternate+Control+Delete, which opens task manager and minimises whatever game I'm playing, close task manager, and maximise my window. The textures will go back to normal and I can continue playing.
But this temorary fix takes about 30 seconds to do, which could very easily lead to my incapacitation or death in an online Left 4 Dead campaign, and thus I pretty much never play online anymore. In single player this is very annoying, but not really a problem because I can just press Escape to pause my game when it freezes. I'd still like to find a permanent solution to it, however.
So, any ideas? I've already done the reinstall Steam thing and all my games. I don't have any add-ons or mods for any games, other than that M1 Garand in Garry's Mod that needs Day of Defeat: Source.
