hey everyone,

i got the valve complete pack for Christmas (very cool) and when playing Left 4 Dead or Counter-Strike: Source my computer will occasionally freeze completely. the clock stops on my G15 keyboard's clock, and the last fraction of a second of sound plays over and over in an endless loop.

the only way i can get out of this is to switch off the power or hit reset, and it'll run an automatic scandisk at startup and appears to do something but i have no idea what. i'll be back with more info next time the crash happens and i do the scandisk again.

what sort of stuff can cause a freeze like that?

it's ridiculously frustrating, as sometimes a game won't last more than a couple of minutes.

i haven't played the other games in the pack very much, so i don't know if it happens with them or not.

i've got a
Pentium D 3.00GHz & 3.01 GHz,
3.12 GB of RAM (actually 4, but that's how much i get away with on XP)
Leadtek GeForce 9600GT 512MB Extreme (extreme means they overclocked it i think),

and all my games are running off an external hdd - 500GB "Skymaster" connected by SATA. very occasionally my computer won't be able to see this drive (called "M" for "Massive") until i reset my computer again.

my drivers are the latest nVidia graphics drivers, and yes, i uninstalled my old one before installing the new one.

any ideas would be very much appreciated.

julz