Game Won't Start

[JimboC]

I've got the Collector's Edition but can't seem to start the game.

Installed the game fine. Created a Steam account fine. Activated the games fine. Updated the games fine.

When I try to play, I get a window that says Preparing to play Half-Life 2 and after 30 seconds it goes away. If I look at the properties for Half Life 2 on Steam's available games, Half-Life 2 says Requires update and Offline Mode says Not Ready. I've got Always keep the game up to date selected but I can't figure out how to get the Offline mode to say Ready.

Same thing happens with Counter Strike Source and Half-Life Source, thought Half Life Source opens to Ready then Changed to Not Ready a second later.

Anyone know how to get this thing going?

 

[NiteX]

It seems many people are having problems starting the game. Lets hope Valve will fix this by tomorrow.

 

[Sarkus]

When you check the properties on Half-Life 2 does it say you are at 100% or is it less? What about CS:S and HL:S?

Let me know if you figure out what's up as I have been struggling with the exact same problem since activating my Steam dowloaded version since this morning. Still no response from Valve :-(

I have seen a few others with this problem, but no solution. I'm currently waiting for HL:S to finish downloading so I can see if that solves the problem. One "fix" that seemed to work for people that were having various problems with HL2 was to make sure HL:S and CS:S were 100% ready.

 

[NiteX]

So how exactly can you tell if they are 100% downloaded?

 

[Sarkus]

Go into Steam, Play Games, and right click on the game. Choose Properties. It should show a percentage after it says "Amount Acquired" - if it's not 100% then you don't have everything.

 

[KitoAce]

well my HL2 says 61% but what the **** does that mean only 61% downloaded... it said it was done!

 

[mongoloido]

I've got the Collector's Edition but can't seem to start the game.

Installed the game fine. Created a Steam account fine. Activated the games fine. Updated the games fine.

When I try to play, I get a window that says Preparing to play Half-Life 2 and after 30 seconds it goes away. If I look at the properties for Half Life 2 on Steam's available games, Half-Life 2 says Requires update and Offline Mode says Not Ready. I've got Always keep the game up to date selected but I can't figure out how to get the Offline mode to say Ready.

Same thing happens with Counter Strike Source and Half-Life Source, thought Half Life Source opens to Ready then Changed to Not Ready a second later.

Anyone know how to get this thing going?

I'm in the same boat you're in. To top it off, I actually had it working for a little while earlier today. I had these problems, then I didn't for an hour or two, then after I took a break to make a sandwich, they were back. For the life of me I can't figure out what's going on. Perhaps steam had an update earlier that fixed the issue, then released another that brought it back? I have no idea. HL2, CSS, and HLS are all 100% and my router settings swear I have all the correct ports open.

 

[JimboC]

AAAARRRRGGGHHHH!!!!!

I'm really getting pissed now. Got up and tried Half-Life 2. Right clicking on the game in Steam now has a status of 'Ready to Play', Offline mode is 'Ready'. When I clicked on the game, I got a box that said, "Your CD Key has successfully established your subscription to Half-Life 2 Retail Collectors. Your subscription is now permanently associated with this Steam account: ....". I click Ok and then get a message that says, "Your account is still being processed. You will be notified when this is completed."

This completely sucks. Valve has no clue what the hell they're doing. I just want to play the game off the FRIGGIN DVD I bought and paid and am HOLDING IN MY HANDS! They can't verify their own product?! Even at this time of morning when 98% of the people in the US won't be using their servers? This is such BS.

 

[mongoloido]

I've gotten all the verified and subscription okays you have, but the game still conks out during startup just as before. I'm beginning to wonder if this is a conflict issue with something else on my computer...

 

[NiteX]

I got the same thing around 9:30 last night it told me my CE is now in the system and all that bullshit. All of my games are at 100% and I still get the same error message for every game unable to authenticate original disc within time limit.

 

[mongoloido]

POSSIBLE FIX!!! IT WORKED FOR ME

If you have the dvd version, may work if you have cd issues too, the stalled startups seem to be an issue with the DVD drive. Go to your manufacturer's website, then download and flash the lastest FIRMWARE for your DVD drive. WARNING: It will probably tell you to in advance, but I'm pretty sure you don't want to have anything in the DVD drive when you flash the firmware.

I Hope this helps. It got my game up and running finally. I'll keep looking and check back if you have problems I can maybe help with.

 

[Shakermaker]

POSSIBLE FIX!!! IT WORKED FOR ME

If you have the dvd version, may work if you have cd issues too, the stalled startups seem to be an issue with the DVD drive. Go to your manufacturer's website, then download and flash the lastest FIRMWARE for your DVD drive. WARNING: It will probably tell you to in advance, but I'm pretty sure you don't want to have anything in the DVD drive when you flash the firmware.

I Hope this helps. It got my game up and running finally. I'll keep looking and check back if you have problems I can maybe help with.

This worked for me as well.

 

[JimboC]

My drive was already flashed to latest firmware. Flashed it anyway in case it maybe was corrupted, but still no joy.

I did find out that my drive isn't a Sony-made drive like I was led to believe when I bought it, but it's instead a repackaged LiteOn drive with Sony's name on it. GRRRRR! I've never had any luck with Lite On CD ROM drives at work, so I don't see why their DVD drives should be any better. Guess I'll be heading out to the store tonight to pick up a new DVD drive.

 

[NiteX]

Well damn I have no idea how to flash the firmware.

If you are clueless like I am on how to flash your DVD here is a page that might help you out, I'm trying it right now. I guess I will do anything to play this game. http://pioneerdvd.rpc1.org/Firmware_FAQ.html

 

[JimboC]

Most DVD drive manufacturer's have automatic flashing utilities on their web site. You usually look up the model number (probably listed in Windows Device Manager if you don't know it) and download the updater. Make sure you remove any media from the drive before running the flashing utility. It will probably want you to reboot the PC and then you'll probably have to set the region.

 

[mparting]

flashing the dvd firmware worked for me too, after two reboots

 

[NiteX]

Ok I just figured out I have a Nu DDW-081 DVD/CD drive. Never new that . I'm trying to figure out how to flash it now. Its rather annoying.

Ok so if my firmware is BX-31 I have to upgrade it to BX-32? And that will flash it? I'm so confused the website doesnt really have a flash program.

 

[NiteX]

Ok I flashed my DVD with the program the site gave me. Now it went from BX31 to BX30 is this right? Well anyway I no longer get the error message that I had before so thats one thing down, now it sounds like my DVD is loading at full strength and it just sits at my desktop doing nothing at all.

 

[mongoloido]

hmmm. I'm kind of a trial and error guy. If I had your DVD drive and problem, I'd DL the BX32, BX31, and BX06 files from the Nu Firmware page:

http://www.nu-global.com/1_english/4_support/01_manuals.php?sID=2

Then I'd flash bx32, and see if it works. If not, try bx31. If not, try the bx06... Sorry I can't be helpfull.

 

[JimboC]

Well, I can say with some level of certaintity that my problem isn't the DVD drive. I bought a new high-end drive made by a different manufacturer. Replaced the old cheapo DVD drive and get the same thing. Changed the firmware to every available version - same thing. Removed the CD-R/RW drive that was the slave - same thing. Restarted the system with every possible thing running in the background turned off - same thing.

I'm really, really pissed at Valve. All I want to do is play their game and it's been nothing but grief. If they knew how to write software, I would at least get an error message that would give me a clue as to what's wrong. Instead I get nothing. On top of that Sierra and Vivendi don't seem to be offering any type of support for the game. Valve's Steam forum is either turned off or too busy to allow any more connections - not that Valve would read their forums anyway.

 

[Bullfrog007]

Same Problem

I've got exacally the same problem as you JimboC. When I go to play it, nothing happens. Its driving me insane. I don't know if this helps, but the same thing happened to me with Theif 3, but I managed to get it working by using a no-cd crack, which makes me think that it must be the dvd-drive or something. Oh, and isn't HL2 using securom for its copy protection?

Running an AMD Athlon 64 3200, ATI 9600XT, 1gig ram and using Windows XP 64 bit edition.

Im wondering, the other thing it might be is the bloddy 64 bit edition of windows... Maybe later on tonight I will borrow my mates copy of windows xp and just install it to see if it works... Of couse even if it does, it means I will have to go out and buy a copy of XP or something! Grr.

 

[Sarkus]

I'm in the same boat as you all, except that I have the Steam downloaded version of the game.

I don't know if this is unusual, but I noticed from watching my Task Manager that CPU usage spikes to 100% when I try to run HL2, then crashes down. Should the game be using that much CPU power?

 

[JimboC]

It's fairly common for a game to use 100% of the CPU utilization.

What happens is Windows talks to every program that is running through a queue of messages. Sometimes Windows won't post messages to the program for seconds at a time, which would be really bad for a game to have to wait 2 or 3 seconds to redraw the screen. So when you're programming a game, you make your program look at the message queue and see if there's a message waiting. If there's no messages waiting, the game continues at it's own pace. If there is a message waiting, the game will check to see what program the message is for and deal with the message if it's for the game. This way games can do things like redrawing the screen dozens of times a second without waiting for Windows to keep up. The result is that Windows reports CPU utilization at 100% because the program is grabbing every clock cycle, but in reality the program is only using what it needs and freeing the CPU as other programs need it.

EDIT: By the way, still no response from tech support and still no Half-Life 2 for me. Valve is still a big group of poopy-heads.

 

[Sarkus]

No response from Valve here either. It's been over two days since I submitted my problem.

I'm trying one last GCF file download then will try several fix ideas one last time. If none work, I'm going to try the full reinstall, even though that will take close to 20 hours at my connection.