It keeps quiting on me, or crashing. It never did this before, and it does it randomly.
So far it has:
-Randomly crashed on me
-Just quit for no reason
-"HL2 engine has stopped working."
and the strangest one...-"Can't load lump 53, allocation of 10673193 bytes failed!!!"
Any idea what's going on?
(PS: This is on Episode 1)
Does it crash with any other Source-based games?
Have you changed anything recently? Software or hardware?
Have you tried to verify the steam install? Make sure your drivers are up to date and all your system patches are complete?
In addition to Hek's suggestion, I'd go as far as to also suggest running an error check on your hard drive where Steam is installed. I don't know what "can't load lump 53" means, but an ignorant layman's guess has me thinking it was a bad disk read.
weird. Well, steam says that Episode 1 and 2 were severly fragmented, so I'm defragging my hard drive.
now what, this'll take a few hours.
Also run memtest86.
I like to blame most errors on damaged memory, mainly because no one takes ESD precautions anymore.
That and memtest86 takes FOREVER to scan
Valve's newest client update fixed a defragging system within steam so that may be why you are running into problems. A system defrag and a defrag of the games themselves will probably help.