keep trying, there is no guaranteed way to get through. its not first come first serve. theres probably not much point in getting worked up over it though, its not like we know when hl2 is comng out and you cant play the pre-load, all you'll be doing is filling up 1gb of your HDD
Yeah, there's nothing to be too excited about. As long as you get the game before it's released you're ok. And if you don't, you just have to wait a few more days to play.
I can't preload either - when I logged on a couple of days ago it was busy so I left it and now I don't know how to get the screen up asking if I want to preload! I tried logging out and in again but it didn't help.