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.

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...

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


:mad:

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 :(

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

I had this problem since I bought the game 1-2 weeks back (CD version), but when I launched steam today HL2 was no longer at 100% acquired, just 99% and needed an update. Apparently the new update fixed the problem for me, but it sounds like it may have caused problems for some of you. Well, I'm able to play now, but if Valve decides to reply (after more than a week) with a specific solution to the problem I'll post it here for you guys. All I know is the HL2 executable wasn't being launched from steam as it should have been until today's update. If it's a drive problem then the steam update configured itself to work with my Asus DVD. Good luck all...don't know if the game is worth this much trouble, but it looks good so far...

~Ace~

Alright, this is weird, but to help all you out im going to post what i did to get the game to run.

I left steam running over night and this morning i hopped on my pc and first checked the forums. I read a post that the process was actually running and then disappeared. So I looked in my task manager and i decided to terminate the steam process. After i did that i went to my desktop and opened HL2. Steam logged me in then i got the "Preparing to play Half Life 2" screen. And behold, to my suprise the game actually loaded. I dont know what else i could have done but terminate the steam process.
:confused:
I hope this can help.

daemon tool messed it up....i did the same thing last night and it worked! Or just wait for it to work. But it worked for me....i removed daemon tools and then closed steam. after i started a cs game wich rebooted steam and BINGO ! worked like a charm! Hope you guys have luck to make it work...and even my friend had the same problem whit his hl2 after the update. So now i think it mught simply be the update getting processed by steam servers....cuz they had problems last night! anyways....let's hope for everything to work out for everyone!

I've been having the exact same problem! Glad to have found this forum.

I'm not sure if this has anything to do with the problem, but while in the 'loading' screen, windows sounds two alerts back to back (that "critical stop" sound) however once i manage to get the screen closed, there are no alerts to be found.

I also tried starting up Deathmatch and the same thing happened, although this time i got to see one of the error messages. It was titled "Hl2.exe - Application Error" and it read as follows:

The instruction at "0x2406dd69" referenced memory at "0x01befacc". The memory could not be "read".

As I said, not sure if any of that will help someone track down the problem, but hopefully it gets sorted soon! Otherwise I'll be returning this game.

- Plonka.

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 :(

- When i got home from work last night i decided to try again. started up Steam first of all and had a look at some of the settings. i right clicked on 'Half Life 2' under 'My Games' and in the properties dialog i turned off the 'automatically update this game' option, closed the dialog, re-opened it and then turned it back on again. I then tried to run HL2 and it worked!

Although this is a suggested 'fix' on Steampowered, i can't be 100% certain that this is what got it working :S

From Steampowered:
"There are several steps that can fix this error if flushing the cache via the [OK] button doesn't work:

Automatic Update needs to be enabled
The first thing to try is to go through all the installed games and make sure automatic update is enabled, a number of players have reported that this option was disabled and when they enabled it the game finished updating and the problem was solved.

You can check this via Steam > Games <right-click on your game>
then click on "properties" and there is the option.

You can also try disabling the automatic update and then re-enabling automatic update which seems to fix this for another another group of players."

I might have found a solution that will solve this problem for some people. (solution is in the last paragraph if you don't want to waste your time)

I had the same problem of course and I spent almost my whole weekend trying to fix it. Then I noticed that Warcraft III wouldnt read the disk(sorta like half-life 2) so I searched for a solution- no luck, but I did find out that both programs are opened by this other program( I forgot what it's called but it starts with an S )
I know that Warcraft III worked with no flaws before I installed Half Life 2 and steam and figured that maybe I somehow got a virus while steam unlocked/downloaded the files. This also might be the reasom why some people couldn't play the game after they downloaded the updates.

So I went to housecall/trendmicro/com (replace the slashes with periods because techspot won't let me put URLs in posts) and scanned my comp and sure enough I had a trojan and a virus on my brand new computer that I built about a few weeks earlier and found one named ppi.exe and dirote.exe - both were also on the startup for windows ( go to start, run, type in MSCONFIG, and go to the Startup tab). I deleted them, dirote was still on the startup thing so I unchecked it and restarted my computer, reinstalled half life 2/steam and now the game works with no problems!!! So look on Taskmanager to see if dirote.exe or ppi.exe is running. I think dirote.exe was the one causing the problem.

Ok, guys and gals, I was having same issue and I was trying everything ... I then went to microsoft and downloaded direct x 9.0c and now i can play.... my only problem is that after I quit the game my computer crashes no mater if its css or hls..... so try that ... try the update to 9.0c and that might fix your issues.

Hope it helps .. now to figure out why my computer crashes after i quit the game.....

Mike

First, I'm glad this thread is here - though too bad there's a need for it at all. I ran into this problem (HL2 failing to load) a couple of nights ago. I tried the things suggested throughout this thread, but nothing helped. (I had high hopes for the Steam cache checking tool, but got nada.) Eventually I gave up for the night - not happy. But then last night it worked fine! The only changes that happend were 1) Steam did an auto-update last night when I went to load HL2, and 2) I freed up a lot of space on the drive where Steam/HL2 is installed (from 300MB to 1.5GB free). Don't know what fixed it, but there are a couple of other things you can try. BTW - I got HL2 via Steam; I'm not using retail CD/DVDs.

Good luck, everyone. I truly hope that all of you can get it working, because this game is utterly incredible! Thank you, Valve!

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.
I haven't had problems running any version of HL2, just the occasional sound stuttering persists.

http://eo.yifan.net/users/j/melkor/dontgotoravenholm.jpg

Well in case Steam, Sierra or Valve do happen to decide to read this forum I'm another one who after many attempts including numerous reinstalls of this product still haven't managed to get past the preparing to load phase. The disc (dvd) spins up, the preparing to play message appears then disappears then nothing. Waste of £30 in my eyes on a product a shop will not take back becuase you cant prove it is faulty !!

My pc's spec if it helps is as follows :-

p4 2.8ghz
512 ddr ram
gigebyte x600 pro pci express graphics card
MSI dvd writer

All drivers updated and all suggestions so far tried without any luck. Have no spare dvd drive to try that one out though.

Hello.

Like all of you guys i am also having problems with loading HL2.
My friend bought the game and it works fine on his com.
He gave me his account details and we installed it on my computer.
When i try to boot it it say "Preparing to play HL2" etc.
THen the message disappears and about 5 mins later it say "This game is not availible right now. Please try again later" or seomthing like that.
This problem also occurs with CS:S.
I have tried reinstaling but ontihng will work.

Im Running :

P4 2.8 Ghz 800 FSB
Windows XP HOME wiht SP2
2x256Mb Hyundai RAM
FX 5700 256Mb RAM video card, with latest drivers
52x DVD/CD Combo drive
80Gb Maxtor HDD
On board sound

Hope someone can help with this strange problem

Thanks,

Ph30nIX :giddy:

Im having the exact same problem as you guys....it gets to the loading stage then just hangs. have any of you guys found a fix yet?
this is really frustrating.
colby

Have you checked from Steam error logs?

They're in 'errorlogs' subdirectory in Steam directory.

ya i just checked...nothing in the folder.

as i said b4 im using a friends account.
the problem as i see it is that steam is not creating an account folder in the directory for the account? why is this?

I have the DVD8601 dvd drive also with the same problem, It just wont load the game, I have no other errors with HL2.

Has anyone been able to fix this problem yet? or is there a link I can goto to fix it myself?.

turns out i had 2 steam installations, so i was looking in the wrong one. it has created the folder, but it still fails to load, has anyone found a fix yet? :zzz:

Please make sure you are not running sonic dla in your system.

Make sure you disable any conflicting application with your programme



Try running the game by disabling all the background applications:


Click Start, and then click Run.
In the Open box, type msconfig, and then click OK.

The System Configuration Utility starts.
Click the General tab, and then click Selective Startup.
Under Selective Startup, click to clear the following check boxes:
- Process System.ini file

- Process Win.ini file

- Load Startup Items

Click the Services tab, click to select the Hide All Microsoft Services check box, and then click Disable All.
Click OK, and then click Restart.
Start the game.

At last Change your cd or dvd drive and surely then you will be able to play the game

It's good to know that I'm not the only one who's had this problem with Half-Life 2. Mine mostly involved getting to the loading screen, hearing a couple of critical error sounds, and seeing a memory conflict error screen. I'd tried most of the suggestions in this thread, with no luck, so I decided to contact HP (I've been trying to use the game on a Presario 2200 that I bought just a month ago). They're reply wasn't exactly what I wanted to hear, but it might explain why so many have had problems.

I've attached part of the transcript of the chat session. BTW, throughout this Steam / Valve / whoever make the game have been crap- I've sent 2 emails- one over 2 weeks ago, with no reply. It might be a fantastic game, and hopefully one day I'll get a chance to play it, but why do I have to find out from HP/Compaq (who knew about the issue and were able to give me an answer in 5 minutes) rather than the manufacturer?

Keith
other people seem to have experienced similar problems (mainly memory
conflicts), although I haven't heard of any from people with Presarios


Kevin
Yes, the graphics card in your laptop is intel extreme graphics card
which does not have the enhanced features to run this game.


This game requires an enhanced video card with the latest
specifications to support the latest version of direct X.


Keith
so I guess there's no way to get it to run on my laptop?


Kevin
There is a PCMCIA slot in the laptop. You can add on enhanced video
card in that slot, install the driver for it and play the games of high
end graphics.



So there you have it- spend out more cash or return the game! :dead:

I am having the same exact problem as well. The only thing is I have been playing the game for 2 weeks now without any problems. I am going to try and do a Windows update and refresh my vid drivers and see what happens. I will update you to what happens

I have read on more than a few sites of people having problems like this. a few ideas I have seen work. Double check that NONE of your PC part are over clocked in any way.
If that does not work some people got it to work by under clocking their system ram. (This includeds CAS timeings guys)
If yo have an Nvidia card you can try under clocking the core a few Mhz.
Try another CDrom drive that spins at slower speeds and/or upgrade to a better CDrom drive.
If you have any CD coping programs installed like Achahol or Nero un-install them.
Turn off your Virus and/or spyware programs. (As steam acts alot like spyware) Also double check if you have the XP SP2 update you firewall is not blocking HL2 from talking to Steam.
And last and the most fun. Re-installing your OS from scratch and make sure you start off with only the newest drivers. Do not install old ones then upgrade them. (I know this is really hard for those of use using Creative stuff, their Driver update method really sucks!!)

Good luck guys!! :angel:

Maybe this here can help at least some of you; it was posted by a guy named fireflaie on halflife2.net: (it solved my problem that was quite similar to yours)

Part 1 :
--------------
Go in the directory :
E:\Valve\Steam\SteamApps\STEAM_ACCOUNT_NAME\half-life 2
there is a directory named "bin" that contains many .dll etc

Part 2 :
--------------
Enter the "bin" directory and copy all the files (ctrl+A, ctrl+C)

go back at E:\Valve\Steam\SteamApps\STEAM_ACCOUNT_NAME\half-life 2
then paste the files here (Ctrl+V)

Part 3 :
--------------
Select all the files and directorys (EXCEPT THE "BIN" DIRECTORY) in

E:\Valve\Steam\SteamApps\STEAM_ACCOUNT_NAME\half-life 2

Copy it !!!

Part 4 :
--------------
No Go back in the "bin" directory then Paste the files and dir you've just copy
if windows tell you that there is files that have the same name so just overwrite it, as you want that's not seams to be a problem if you don't

Part 5 :
--------------
Quit Steam
=> Reload Steam, right click : Games, right click on Half-Life 2 and Launch the game
Enjoy if that works , sorry if that don't

Thanks. I will give it a try and let you know the status. You might have come across a way to help countless others as well.

I have been having the same problem as described above. etc,etc. Unfortunately, I am not a programmer or even particularly skilled with pc's. I am loathe to try what countuebles suggests cos i havn't got a clue what i'm doing (though thanks for the effort of help). However, I loved half life and desperately want to play the sequel. Should I give up? Does any body who knows what they are on about actually think a sensible solution to this problem will be forthcoming? And I do not mean putting a new(or old) dvd drive in my machine-i don't know how to do this and fail to see why I should have to. Surely this is a legal problem. Valve/steam/sierra (whoever) have sold me something that I can not use or return. without in my opinion sufficient warning as to the problem that is occouring. If there is no hope of a solution then i'll just sack the whole thing and forget about it. WHY SHOULD I NEED A DEGREE IN PROGRAMMING/PC BUILDING IN ORDER TO USE SOMETHING I'VE BOUGHT IN GOOD FAITH. THIS SITUATION IS INTOLERABLE, FRANKLY OUTRAGEOUS AND POSSIBLY EVEN ILLEAGAL. Valve/steam/sierra- WHAT A BUNCH OF ARSEHOLES. IF I WAS AS INCOMPETENT AS THEY ARE IN MY JOB I WOULD EXPECT TO HAVE MY EMPLOYMENT TERMINATED.



sorry, I feel a little better now.

Hi, i have had this same problem after i updated steam and HL2 Deathmatch. I have played it before and am at the airboat level, but ever since patch i cannot load hl2, nor CS source or anything, i dont think its my cdrom or anything, cause its worked before.. "preparing to play Half-Life 2..." then a mouse icon and a working glass, then nothing, no error message nothing.

someone please post at steam's official forum site under general or somthing to get steam's attention, i keep getting errors signing up there.

this problem seems to be common but steam has no idea what to do? someone let them know, because no1 has posted anything else about this other than on this forum board.

ps: have tryed lowering dvdrom speed to 1x, etc, but still no dice. someone post a thread at steams site linking to this prob (^_^)

Hi guys! I have been reading your problems with running half-life 2 on steam, and CONGRATULATIONS! I have got a sollution. I had the same problems with running hl2 before, but it all has been fixed. Ok, here we go. Try this:Try to update your system, or try to update the dvd-driver. If this doesn't work, buy a new DVD-driver and install it, it worked for me, my best friend and 10 other buddies i know, the dvd-driver is not so expencive, try this, it's your only choise, and if this does'nt work, try to uninstall steam and hl2 and install it again, or else, go to a electronic shop or someone you know who maybe can fix the problem. GOOD LUCK! :grinthumb

I have tryed to look for CD-ROM drivers on the net and fail to find any, as i goto properties on my computer (this is winXP), i goto hardware,device manager,and then DVD-CDROM Drives, and ones i got listed are _NEC CD-RW and then a CD-ROM Drive. I cant tell the maker of my cdrom drive, and this one site i went to told you to choose your company. I have tryed clicking on Update Driver also, and went to Recommened setting, couldnt find anything, this is a stand cdrom that came with pc. Where do i go to find cdrom updates???

ps: do you think if i update to winXP Service Pack 2 (SP2) might work?

@ jim453: Don't worry pal you won't do anything overly complicated. You are just rearranging files to force steam around a memory problem they seem to have. To be 100% sure you don't hack up anything, copy the whole E:\Valve\Steam\SteamApps\STEAM_ACCOUNT_NAME\half-life 2 directory into another dir somewhere (call it temp or whatever) and THEN do as I wrote in my initial posting. If you really would frag up (which is rather unlikely) you still could copy the old dir in your temp dir back and everything would be a it was before, even without reinstalling. (which you could do as well in any way).
It looks more complicated when its written down then it actually is - all you do is copy files into another directory, then copy them back plus some others.

@ steamarg: A lot of people already notified valve about this and similar problems, it just seems they are either to much occupied with other stuff (fighting legal battles with vivendi about steam perhaps?) or just dont frigging care atm.

About your CD-Rom problem: Why don't you take it out and look for a label with the manufracturer and - important - the exact type of your drive. Mostly those labels are on the upper or underside of a drive, sometimes on the back. Unless its a super cheapo chinese clone there should be SOMETHING there.

Ok everyone, I have the solution for the load failure with no error. There is in fact an error and it has to do with memory.

Here is the fix:

First location:

Right click your Half Life 2 icon on your desktop (the one you would normally double-click to launch the game). Then click Properties. Click the Shortcut Tab. In the line labeled Target, you will see something like this, depending on where you put the program when you installed it:

"C:\Program Files\Steam\Steam.exe" -applaunch 22

Copy and paste the following AFTER the above line:

+mat_forcehardwaresync 0 +snd_async_prefetch_priority 1

Be sure there is a space between -applaunch 22 and +mat

Click save and you are ready to go.

Second location:

From the Steam Play Games Menu, right click on Half Life 2. Choose Properties, then click Launch Options. Paste the following in the box.

+mat_forcehardwaresync 0 +snd_async_prefetch_priority 1

Click Ok and you are ready to go.

Do the same fix for Half Life 2 Deathmatch and Counter Strike Source.

Offline and Online Mulitplayer modes should all work now.

Good Luck!!!

dammmmmmmmmmmmmmmm im having da same exact problem!!!! :hotouch:

nothing works. Buying a new PC for thousands doesn't feel like a very fair solution to the problem of playing a fifty pound game.

Ok everyone, I have the solution for the load failure with no error. There is in fact an error and it has to do with memory.

Here is the fix:

First location:

Right click your Half Life 2 icon on your desktop (the one you would normally double-click to launch the game). Then click Properties. Click the Shortcut Tab. In the line labeled Target, you will see something like this, depending on where you put the program when you installed it:

"C:\Program Files\Steam\Steam.exe" -applaunch 22

Copy and paste the following AFTER the above line:

+mat_forcehardwaresync 0 +snd_async_prefetch_priority 1

Be sure there is a space between -applaunch 22 and +mat

Click save and you are ready to go.

Second location:

From the Steam Play Games Menu, right click on Half Life 2. Choose Properties, then click Launch Options. Paste the following in the box.

+mat_forcehardwaresync 0 +snd_async_prefetch_priority 1

Click Ok and you are ready to go.

Do the same fix for Half Life 2 Deathmatch and Counter Strike Source.

Offline and Online Mulitplayer modes will should all work now.

Good Luck!!!


Thank you very very much, that solved my friends problem. :)

Ok everyone, I have the solution for the load failure with no error. There is in fact an error and it has to do with memory.

Here is the fix:

First location:

Right click your Half Life 2 icon on your desktop (the one you would normally double-click to launch the game). Then click Properties. Click the Shortcut Tab. In the line labeled Target, you will see something like this, depending on where you put the program when you installed it:

"C:\Program Files\Steam\Steam.exe" -applaunch 22

Copy and paste the following AFTER the above line:

+mat_forcehardwaresync 0 +snd_async_prefetch_priority 1

Be sure there is a space between -applaunch 22 and +mat

Click save and you are ready to go.

Second location:

From the Steam Play Games Menu, right click on Half Life 2. Choose Properties, then click Launch Options. Paste the following in the box.

+mat_forcehardwaresync 0 +snd_async_prefetch_priority 1

Click Ok and you are ready to go.

Do the same fix for Half Life 2 Deathmatch and Counter Strike Source.

Offline and Online Mulitplayer modes should all work now.

Good Luck!!!

I think I am only sharing the problem with half of the people here. From what I can figure out most of you can’t read the DVD at all (meaning when the DVD is in the drive it says there is nothing in it) or is that just me? Anyway I just thought I would mention that because for some of us (or maybe just me) don't have any sort of a HL2 icon to click on. There is not even an error message when the DVD is placed in the drive.

After swapping the game today for the first time I was hoping that it would decide to work. However once again I heard the spinning and was lifted by the flashing light on the drive only to sit and wait....Nothing. Thats all it does. Checked My Computer D:\ drive. My DVD drive has never let me down.....till now. There was apparently no DVD in the drive in fact apparently there was nothing in the drive. Sorry to be long winded and maybe sound a little irritated but I want to make sure we all know what is going on.

I have had a reply from Vivendi. I sent them the problem and they kindly sent back stuff that didn’t even come close. Starting up with nothing in the task bar (I am not an idiot, I tried but as I thought no change). Clicking on steam and doing something to that (but I said I didn’t have steam?? what are they talking about). They have been rubbish and so I am asking you. Please help me out guys. Anyone that this has happened to will understand the frustration, its so petty I just want to play a game.

By the way this whole thing means that the solution up there doesn’t work.

Thanks anyway keep trying guys and I will keep e-mailing Vivendi.

Sladers,

The solution I posted is not for your problem. I think you are talking about an Autorun feature that is not working. Have you installed the game already? You saying you do not have Steam is telling me you haven't. You MUST have Steam as it is required to register and authenticate the game. It will be the first thing installed when you run setup.

I have have tried this $#%#@@ game on a new computer that I built a little while back and I am getting the same problem as every body else here, so I tried it on my brothers system with the same results.
I try to start the game and "STEAM" loads, I get the valve splash screen (the guy with the valve in his eye) then the screen goes black and kicks back to the desktop, The cd or dvd rom doesn't even spin up. I am using the cd rom retail version of the game.
I have tried reloading game, changing drivers for everything, slowing clock speeds of video cards, turning hardware acc. down on sound cards, adding the lines to the starup that are mentioned in other posts, loading and removing service pack 2, updating drivers for chipset (Via in both cases). Everything except flashing bios or updating firmware, which I refuse to do for the sake of this game.
I know that half life is optimized for ATI cards but looking through other posts I see that people with ATI cards are having the problem as well, so it is not the Nvidia cards. I have other games that run fine on both systems, including far cry and doom 3 so there is nothing wrong with either system.

I sent tech support an email a few days before christmas and got a reply that they need a copy of my dxdiag, I sent it to them before christmas and have heard nothing back. I am sorry for rambling on but I am very frustrated with all of this. I was looking forward to playing this game and for the longest time could not find anyone else who was having the same problem. At least now I know that there is more then me that are getting very pissed off.

Hopefully valve will do something about this soon, We should all start an email campaign to their tech support until they do something for us. $60 might not seem like much to some people, but it is alot for a coaster.

GOOD LUCK!!!

my system:
AMD 64 3500+
ASUS A8V Deluxe MB
BFG 6800gt oc
1gb Samsung PC 3200 Ram
2 WD 80 gb sata hard drives 8 mb cache
Benq DVD durner
LG CDRW
sound blaster audigy platinum
Win XP Pro

brothers system:
AMD xp 1800
gigabyte mb
768 samsung pc 2700 ram
MSI TI 4400 128 mb video card
Asus CDRW
Hitachi CD Rom
Onboard sound
WD 80 gb ata hard drive 8 mb cache
Win XP Home

Sladers,

The solution I posted is not for your problem. I think you are talking about an Autorun feature that is not working. Have you installed the game already? You saying you do not have Steam is telling me you haven't. You MUST have Steam as it is required to register and authenticate the game. It will be the first thing installed when you run setup.

Thanks for your help so far by the way. I'm impressed that you are actually reply so soon. so thanks. I havent yet installed the game. because as i mentioned my computer just doesnt appear to recognise the DVD. Also i do have steam for Half life 1 and counter strike (i am affriad i over exaggerated) because i just didnt see how that would help me specific problem. But just to make sure that you know i have NOT been able to install HL2 or CS source (and the auto run thing does not appear and there is no error). Thanks again for your help so far. If you think any more info may help then just ask.

Got HL2 for xmas, installed it but every time i try to load the game the following message appears...... ' failed to load the launcher DLL. One of the library files needed to load this application cannot be found'.

We had the game loaded before, it ran and worked fine but we had to format the hard drive (in an unrelated problem) re-loaded the game and now we get that DLL message.

Anyone know of this problem or have a soloution at all?

Cheers

Dont know why but i got ad-aware SE and cleaned up everything on my computer and for some reason it has started working. It may have been some weird virus but that problem is now gone. Just got to hope that no new problems arise during my install. Keep fingers crossed. Thanks for the help guys.

ok follow instructions [this worked for me]
open steam > click play games > RIGHT click half life 2
> properties > launch options > enter this

+mat_forcehardwaresync 0 +snd_async_prefetch_priority 1

ok part one good.
now minimize all windows and RIGHT click the HL 2 icon on your desktop
>compatibility [at top]
click run in 640x480.

it should work. if not make sure you have newest directX and minimum requirements. this worked for me. you might want to lower your options if it loads

HOPE THIS HAS HELPED!

Ok everyone, I have the solution for the load failure with no error. There is in fact an error and it has to do with memory.

Here is the fix:

First location:

Right click your Half Life 2 icon on your desktop (the one you would normally double-click to launch the game). Then click Properties. Click the Shortcut Tab. In the line labeled Target, you will see something like this, depending on where you put the program when you installed it:

"C:\Program Files\Steam\Steam.exe" -applaunch 22

Copy and paste the following AFTER the above line:

+mat_forcehardwaresync 0 +snd_async_prefetch_priority 1

Be sure there is a space between -applaunch 22 and +mat

Click save and you are ready to go.

Second location:

From the Steam Play Games Menu, right click on Half Life 2. Choose Properties, then click Launch Options. Paste the following in the box.

+mat_forcehardwaresync 0 +snd_async_prefetch_priority 1

Click Ok and you are ready to go.

Do the same fix for Half Life 2 Deathmatch and Counter Strike Source.

Offline and Online Mulitplayer modes should all work now.

Good Luck!!!


:giddy: Oh Joy!, weeks and weeks I've been waiting to play this game and thanks to your solution it finally works! Thank you so much I did indeed have memory errors and this was the only solution that fixed it, I tried everything except changing my CD-rom drive, I knew that couldn't be the problem for my entire computer was only 2 month old. I am interested in the deeper meaning of what the problem and actually was and what the solution does and how it works, could you explain?