HL2 steam problem

[drjones01]

ok, so i click on Half Life 2 to play, it opens my steam account, and goes into this download where it says "decrypting steam files" and it is stuck at 20%. i have tried cancelling it, and reopening it, and it still starts at 20% and wont go up from there. ive never used steam beore today, so i dont really have any clue what to do.

 

[G-Dub]

What are your system specs and internet connection?

 

[drjones01]

i have an alienware area51m 7700 with an ati x800, 3.2 ghz procesor and a gig of ram. now, im in iraq right now, and im trying to download this with a satellite connection. i think that is the problem, as i have left the download alone for several hours, and it went up to 30%. once this is done, am i going to be able to play this game offline or do i have to be connected in order to play it? thanks for the help

 

[Hectic Glenn]

Either, doesn't matter. If you play connected to the net you will be able to recieve updates, but steam has an offline mode which you can put it in to play Halflife 2 single player, AND Counter Strike Source with Bots if you have that installed as well. However Halflife 2 deathmatch does not have bots, so you can't play that offline. (counter strike source and deathmatch are online games too if you want to play them online).

Anyway, your connection may be the issue. If it totally stops, delete a file called 'clientregistry.blob' in your steam folder somewhere, steam will make a new one when you restart it, and it will fix any frozen downloads (use this as a last resort though). And your in iraq, wow we get some diversity here, Half-life 2 really gets around eh?

 

[^Ben]

Weird, when it's decrypting the files it's not actually downloading anything.

My freinds laptop sometimes throttles his CPU when it thinks it's not in use. So it might be throttling your bad boy of a machine down to some stupidly slow clock speed.