hey everyone~

i bought half-life2, of course, downloaded it and tried to play. friends said i needed to update drivers, so i did. i got the new directx 9 drivers, the new nvidia drivers, new monitor drivers, and new motherboard drivers, and i still cant play. the problem is i load, and then a black screen comes up with background sound for the initial hl2 game menu. i can move around and click new game etc, but no video. if i type -console i can see the menu when it loads, but after starting a new game, black screen again with Gman talkin. crazy thing is, my WC3 doesnt work anymore either, with weird video problems. ive scan disked, virus scanned, defragged, e-mailed steam tech support, to no avail (bastages dont email back), i think i followed everything on steam tech forums, and im one step away from reformatting, once i get a hold of a xp cd up in college, which is pretty hard.
~i think its directx9 or hl2 itself causing the problems, as wc3 worked fine before. the only other game i have is doom95 shareware, and trying to beat par is getting old ;]
~also it might be the monitor, although i doubt it, but "No Input Signal" flashes occassionally during the black screen stuff.

if anyone can help, i cant say how thankful i would be.

some system specs:
OS = XP Pro
Motherboard = MSI / MS-6380E
CPU = AMD XP 2200+ ~1.8GHz
Memory = 1024MB RAM
Monitor = Princeton Flat

Again, thanks just for taking the time to read this, and any help might recover some of my sanity.
In the mean time, back to Doom 95... :evil:

Try this
http://content.guru3d.com/index.php?page=detonatorrip&menu=0

you left out the most important spec, what vid card? and which nvidia drivers, I.m running 67.03 myself. But sometimes there are those strange things that can only be resolved with a reinstall of windows. But be sure it's not something easy, before you go to all that trouble. (and don't forget to backup your bookmakrs, documents and addressbook!)

GeForce 4 Ti-4600

newest drivers installed from nvidia website, and yea the monitor goes to standby, thanks again guys. how do i force refresh rates?

Black Screen on hl2

Try this....
go to
C:\Program Files\Valve\Steam\SteamApps\User\Half-Life 2\bin

and remove file .... vtex.dll and then start game .... should be back to default settings.... worked for me.


Ivon