Half Life 2 fails to load

I Found The Fix

ok i downloaded this game last night on steam, it went smooth no problems with the preload.

Now the problem with using this game is that steam need to verify it, and also do something to your game content, which takes ages.


If you open up steam and select halflife 2 straight off, then its a 99% chance it will never load. If this is the case then reboot, go back to steam and rigth click on half life 2 (and CS:S).

Select properties.. now it should open a little window, now in this is a line saying

Aquiredor something), followed by a percentage.
and underneath it says

Offline play: Not Ready (or Ready, if its working)


If your aquirement isnt 100%, then you need to leave steam open while it aquires the liscence, the bad news is it took me all night (at least 8 hours FFS). It will then appear as 100%, and Ready for offline play.

Then it will work no problems.


Dont forget to verify your files in the news update links, and forget reinstalling the game or getting new CD/DVD drives, mine was installed straight to HDD by steam so no disc access was required.

GL guys!

Offline play is ready for me.

***, I have the same cd/dvd as you with exactly the same errors which you are describing. Have you ever touched it's drivers?

looks like its a DVD burner issue?

Have found another thread discussing how to migrate from Philips DVD+R(W) Dvd8601 to Benq DVD+-R(W) DW1620 by changing the firmware. Maybe that would work? Feels like I've now spent more time trying to fix this than I would have playing the game! I'm not a PC engineer and don't have an old DVD knocking about so maybe it's time to say Game Over.

I think maybe were geting somewhere

Swedish, no I havent pulled that old gateway dvd rom out, im just playing hl2 on that machine. And other then the semiregular crash where hl2 just decides to shut down, its playable. As far as my 2 new dell dimensions, with philips dvd+rws, im still having the same issue as everyone else. Wispymatt is bringing up this firmware for our drives, however I dont know if I want to mess with it. What do I gain if I go with that new firmware update? My drive works flawless now, other then not playing hl2.

Lifes to short.

I have notified Steam/Valve of this thread and returned HL2 to the shop as a faulty product. Thanks for being here anyway, you all provided a bit of hope for a while!
I'll just have to find a similar game that was tested more thoroughly.

m.

That seems like a reasonable thing to do. Now, even if I did manage to get it working, my original enthusiasm to play the game has disappeared. Besides, it seems that there are some other more enjoyable games (going from many reviews I've seen lately on HL2) out there.

cookiemoose.

its too bad

Well guys I understand the lack of enthusiasm, but dont let it get you down. Fortunately i have more then one pc and I have been able to play the game on one of them (just not the one Id like). I feel really bad for you guys out there who havent been able to play at all since you've gotten the game.

My next step is going to be buying a couple of regular used dvd-rom drives from ebay and seeing if that fixes my issue.

I Have The Answer!

MY friends, after hearind all your woes and seeing your enthusiasm for my now beloved game dwindle, I scoured the net. And upon reading hundreds of different threads I have found OUR ANSWER! My last post stated I was going to buy new dvd rom drives and im sure that would solve my(our) issues. However I realize this isnt always practical. We the valid consumer have been cheated, so its our turn to cheat. The people who dont have this problem are the people who have the steam client only, no cd or dvd. And in that is our solution.

Download this file and read the instructions, (3 steps very easy) I did it on 2 of my machines (my 3rd just fried today) and the game is working great now!
heres the link:

Download this file

please let me know how you guys do. Enjoy!

Half Life 2

I have the same problem as you!

Steam loads fine and lists games to play.....click on HL2 and it says preparing to play, the disk spins and then.....nothin.

I think this must be something to do with the program....I have posted the problem with Sierra support but no reply yet.

The game did work once and it is incredible! Can't wait to get back on.

Hey all, Im having the exact same problem. I can run HL:Source and CSS, but not HL2. I have the DVD version like most of you. I tried the no cd hijak and still nothing. Please help i want to try the new deathmatch. As of right now im going to use this smilie
puke:
>>>>STEAM

Argh

Same deal. I have installed both a different DVD drive and installed that "HiJack." Nothing works for me.. Not HL2, or the online games. Do I have to reinstall with this new drive!?

I dont suppose any of you installed a ripped version of the game? I had and decided to buy. Could this be a common trait that no one is willing to bring up? Now Im considering going back.. To think, Steam was designed to prvent this kind of thing.

Umm...

Okay, so I've been playing hl2 for about 5 days now. I stopped earlier today, and there was an update. As soon as I got done downloading, I went to play the game. I got this same problem - just a simple crash as soon as the program loaded. I checked the task manager only to find that hl2 actually loads then closes. I downloaded hl2 instead of purchasing it, so it's not a cd problem, and I've tried both in online and offline modes. I'm thinking that it's an update problem since I've been playing for a long time before this, but I don't understand what it could be and this is really teh only place I've found that even mentions it.

Does anyone have any ideas? Steam forums are down and there's nowhere else for me to go!

Perhaps, apparently there are a lot of problems with the newest update. Hence the forums at steampowered being down. But the first post on this thread was from 2 weeks ago.

I have the same problem as Kosei, I've been playing since it was released (I've started successfully about 50 times) but then just after i got the latest update a couple of hours ago i get this problem.

Athlon xp2400+
Asus a7n8x deluxe (nforce2 chipset)
80gig HDD
Sony DVD-+RW
512MB RAM
128 MB Geforce 4 ti4200 8x

I have the DVD but i dont have access to another dvd drive and its been working for so long. Any ideas, i'm dying to try DM.

I just got the same problem 2day after dloading the updates. I do have the original dvd of the game but couple of days before i dloaded a ripped version on the net. I would be suprised if this is an answer to ppl like me whom cant wait to buy the game to try it out, but it really sucks that i cant play cs now...Im soooo freaking pissed. I think it's steams update that messed it up, or perhaps the cd/dvd rom devices! We need to fix this or else alot of ppl r gonna b pissed, waited long for this game to come out and now look what happens! ...and i just got my 7.1 system...barely tried it once yesterday....

specs:
p4 3,0 g
512m
ati radeon 9X00

OK so theres lots of people with the problem, but is there anyone without the problem with the latest HL2 update, it might help us work out what's wrong with the ones which dont work.

Behold the ULTIMATE SOLUTION my friends (well, it worked for me) for the "no error message error"... it's the same error as the one that says that the drive is trying to read the disk too fast, so I downloaded an app called Nero DriveSpeed and reduced the Speed to 8X... needless to say it finally worked, otherwise I woundn't be posting here... for those with the DVD Retail version, there is a Nero DVDSpeed or something like that, I'm not sure what the name is, but if you search for the DriveSpeed on google, finding the equivalent to DVD is not that hard... now that I can run this crap, time to solve the ever-popular stuttering problem...

behold, no solution

I'm another muppet that downloaded this and get 'preparing to play half-life 2' and then nothing. I want my money back.

Worked fine until update dated 30/11/04

when i first bought hl2 my 2 yr old LG DVD drive couldn't read the disc, so i bought a new Sony one which worked fine. installed it the game, registered it using steam and must have played it about 10 times now. until this morning... steam downloaded an update - something about buffers, dated 30/11/04, and since then i haven't been able to run it. Just like everyone else i get the "Preparing to play Half Life 2..." dialog, which then disappears, my DVD drive is accessed and that's it. nothing. I have posted a question to the official support site regarding this but not heard back yet (has only been a few hours!) but hopefully valve will issue a new update to fix this problem which it seems alot of people are having. such a shame as it's an amazing game

Preparing to play Half-Life 2: Possible Solution.

I've encountered this problem last night (after steam installed some patches) and I've read some of the posts on this forum indicating that they have problems with their CD/DVD drives, etc. Then I realized that I had daemon tools running, so I removed it off startup and tried and bingo! It worked! I guess steam detects any fake/ISO utility programs and it thinks that its running HL2/CSS/any steam app.

Let me know how it turns out for you guys.

L8r

Rollen