Gmail notifier crashing Half-Life 2?

I am not sure whether the gmail notifier is the culprit, but I am highly suspicious.

When new messages come in, the notifier makes an audible alert plus a small pop-up in the corner of the screen. Most of the times, Half-Life 2 just goes running without a hitch, but there are times when it crashes. Far Cry has never had a problem with it.

When HL2 crashes, it does so rather gracefully. The screen flashes and the computer returns to the desktop with no error message. Everything else runs fine, including the notifier. And if I start HL2 immediately following the crash, everything runs normally.

Has anyone else experience the same problem?

Yeh I've had that problem ans so has one of my mates.

Its not gmail notifier thats doing it cos he's only just got a gmail account and its been crashing like that on him for months.

It just seems to do it randomly cos it will be fine one all the maps one day and the next it may crash. Also it seems to be more with CSS with me hl2dm seems mostly fine.

I'll try turning the notifier off when I run the game to see whether the problem persists. The problem rarely occurs--on the frequency of once a month or so. So it's not that annoying.