hi, im a relative newb to the pc world, but i got addicted to hl2/css and i joined a clan. When i did, they insisted that i get ventrilo and a mic, so i did and everything was fine. when the new version of ventrilo came out though and i ran it while running hl2 or any hl2 based game, that hl2 game would crash and come up with a "hl2.exe has encountered an unexpected error". So I've tried many things and i finally have narrowed it down to ventrilo being the problem. When i run hl2 or css or any hl2 mod without ventrilo running, it runs fine. I have searched and have found others with this problem, but no real solution. I think it might be my sound card drivers or something, but i do not know how to find out what sound card i have. All i know is i have a nvidia 5200 video card (soon to get a 6800) and an AMD sempron 1.66ghz. Does anyone know why this would happen??? -thanks toaster.