Help With Installation

[Wesablo]

Ey, I'm new to the forums but I have been having a problem installing my old Half Life 2 back to my comp. I bought HL2 when it came out and installed it fine then. I've wiped the drive a few times since, and I got a hankering to replay it. Now that I try to reinstall on the same system year or two later, it isn't working out so well.

The problem is that I install HL2, go through all 5 discs, and though it says install successful it just plain won't load the game. I'm not positive what exactly is going wrong, but steam has always been crap and i know it's been changing since the last time i used it. I uninstalled both HL AND steam like 5 times and reinstalled, and still no good.

At the end of the installation, it shows a small loading box comes up from steam and it looks like it's about to do some synch thing with steam or load the game, but it never shows any progress and quickly goes away. After that I try to click the desktop shortcuts of both HL and CS:S and nothing ends up happening. It also might help to be noted that I run with Win XP, though like I said I had it before and never had a problem with this. Anyone know whats up with this or experience the same problem?

Thanks!
~Wes

 

[Vegeta897]

Hmm uh, I'd say don't install through the CDs. Just activate the game on Steam and download it from there.

 

[Wesablo]

Hmm I didn't know you could do that, I'll try it. Thanks. - Nice name btw, and wiggling avatar lol.

 

[ríomhaire]

Yeah the thing about Steam is that you can install it on any PC, log in to your account and redownload all the games you own onto that PC. And you can do this as many number of times you like on as many PCs as you like.

 

[Wesablo]

well, I finally got home and was able to try the suggestion of entering the product key in steam, and it's still giving me a problem. When I put the code in it says hit next to register, and when I do a message comes up saying -
"Installation of Half-Life 2 Retail Standard is required before continuing. Please insert your Half-Life 2 Retail Standard CD/DVD into the drive and select 'install' from the autorun menu.". The thing about that is, I've already technically installed HL2 but like I said before it won't load when I try to run it. I put the disc .01 in the drive when it says that and all it says 'Play Half-Life 2' because I've installed it already.

 

[Vegeta897]

Uninstall it, I guess.

 

[Wesablo]

Yaaa, I did that and it's still saying the same thing.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

Are sure you sure that it is installing HL2 to the correct location? There is a common issue where the game installs to C:/Program Files/Valve/Steam rather than C:/Program Files/Steam. You need to make sure that HL2 installs into the directly for Steam not the Valve/Steam one.

 

[Wesablo]

Hmmm interesting - it IS installing to :...valve\steam\ yet theres no way for me to change the directory. Do I have to move it manually afterwards?

 

[Hectic Glenn]

Yes you could do, try moving from the valve/steam/ directory the entire steamapps folder, replace the one found in the proper Steam installation directory. (Program Files/Steam).

 

[Wesablo]

Well, after switching the directory I got this message upon trying to load HL....

"Fatal Error: Failed to load platform modules"

And it still won't load the games.

 

[Wesablo]

Welllll.....I finally found what the problem was. Last time I played was so long ago that I actually had a different account at that point, which I forgot, and all this time I've been trying to access it with a new account I've made since then. Thank the lord I finally figured it out, though it was a bit of a dumb mistake. Thanks to everyone who helped out regardless.

~Wes