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Half Life 2 makes monitor go black

not just go black. It actually makes my video card think its not plugged in

Author Replies
thetouchablegod Friday 1 June 2012 at 2:57
thetouchablegodAnonymous

Hey guys. I have tried a few different things for solving this problem to no avail. I'm hoping someone can help.

I am running Ubuntu 12.04 an asus p8h61-m le motherboard with an i3 processsor, 4gb of Ram, and an ati hd 5450 graphics card. This is all plugged into an Envision 19" monitor, and my Insignia 43" HDTV. I have Steam and Half life 2 installed in the same virtual drive, using the latest 1.5.5 version of Wine. 

Here is my problem: When I try to run Half life 2, (or any other steam game for that matter) My screen goes black, says no signal and goes into standby mode. What happens, is it switches from duplicating my monitor on my tv to only displaying on my television. 

I quit out of the game and tried to switch back to my monitor, using both ARandR, and Catalyst Control Center. Lo and behold, Ubuntu thinks my monitor is unplugged. I can fix this by either logging out or restarting, but it is a pain in the butt.

If anyone can help with this problem, it would be greatly appreciated. I have every extra package installed that should be needed, and probably a few that aren't. I have also tried using crossover games, but came back to this because I can't pay $60 for the software.

Thanks,
thetouchablegod Friday 1 June 2012 at 9:07
thetouchablegodAnonymous

This really is the only thing that is stopping me from becoming a full on Ubuntu user, and getting rid of my windows partition completely.

Any ideas even? I'm grasping at straws here.
thetouchablegod Friday 1 June 2012 at 23:12
thetouchablegodAnonymous

Would anyone suggest running Steam in Virtualbox? Maybe someone would want to help with figuring out the settings?
petch Saturday 2 June 2012 at 0:38
petch

Hi,
Virtual machines won't give you any 3D acceleration (at best it's "experimental"), so they're not fit for gaming.
BETLOG Sunday 3 June 2012 at 10:00
BETLOGAnonymous

This sounds similar to the way CS:S was crashing for me
http://www.playonmac.com/en/topic-8940-CounterStrikeSource_ALMOST_works.html
Check your resolutions and I'd get the PC monitor working before you try HDMI too.
thetouchablegod Tuesday 5 June 2012 at 10:25
thetouchablegodAnonymous

Well, thats my whole problem. The games seem to run alright, but they only show up on my tv. And when I quit out of the games, my pc monitor ddoesnt even show up as plugged in to my video card.