Need help with left 4 dead 2 + Steam

Hey. I got an issue that happens somtimes when I start games.

They refuse to play in my resolution 1680x1050. What happens is that when I start a game, such as L4D2 the screen goes black. Pitch black. This has happened with one other game aswell, Dragon Age II. I cannot go out of the program, I can't do anything so it ends up with me pressing the shut down buttion. I can't even press my restart buttion.

Steam, which is the program I start L4D2 from is saying they don't recognice my graphic card either...

Anybody know what this can be caused by?
I'm in greneral a computer noob, so if you ask me to look for something to give here please tell me how to.

Windows 7 64-bit
AMD Athlon(TM) 64 x2 Dual Core Processor 6000+ 3.01 GHz
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460

Steam has excellent support forums. Google steam forums, steam support. They should be able to give you an answer.

GW is sold on Steam, but does not require the Steam client to run. So you are unlikely to get debugged here.

It doesn't matter that it can't be recognised anyway; it just means they can't be certain if it will function correctly on your PC. Just run it anyway. If it crashes alot then get a new card.

Did you install the proper driver for your video card? If you are only running on the default Windows driver, you can have such problems.

Do other games work through Steam or is this exclusively a Steam problem?

As you've got Steam running, click "Steam" on the menu bar, then "Check for video driver updates..."

Worth a shot...

Oh, and for those who asked - we strive to help with any tech-related problems here: They don't have to relate to Guild Wars.

I have Steam.. and i have a LOT of games through them.

While i did not buy GW through them, i have run GW both from within and without Steam and never had any problems. But then im running an 512mb PCI-E Nvidia card so i shouldnt.. lol

Just a general rule: never use "onboard" video if at all possible. 9 times out of 10 they are crap because they eat up your ram for video memory and the drivers arent all that great. Games crash frequently with them.

It's not only with steam, it happened through Dragon Age II aswell but I heard it was a problem with the game itself? Not being able to run in Full Screen?

Either way, it has been showing to so far only constantly happening with games I start through Steam. I have tried fixing the stuff through the steam options but it just doesn't work for me. I got a decent graphic card and should have no troubles...

Thanks tho I thought now I wouldn't be able to get any help cause of maybe it wasn't for anything else than Guild Wars. I will try update them again and see if I have any luck. I'll report back, thanks

Just wanted to say it doesn't work to update. It didn't work to delete the l4d2 files in steamapps folder. I also tried to use the launch options for l4d2 and set them to my resolution -w 1680 -h 1050 -refresh (60). Didn't work either.

Question are you running dual monitors? I play left 4 dead 2 also I was having a issue with it crashing/Black screening. As soon as i set my display to a single monitor all problems went away. But I can not run the game at high end 1680x1050 I have to run it around the 1280x1024 area. just my experience hope it helps