I'm wondering if you can help me out.

[Babrook]

I finally got a new computer, so I could finally play Half Life 2. Yay. I buy the game, install it, do all the steam stuff, and I go in and play. I worked out great, until the part where I meet barney in the "Torture" Room sort of thing, and I need to escape. I jump put the widnow and then I enter the building. Then somthing comes up, says LOADING, and dosn't stop.

Now, I downloaded the demo, and I got farther then that with the demo, so I was wondering what gives?

SPECS-

Radeon X700 256mb PCIE
512 RAM
Pent 4 3ghz

 

[Lahire149]

latest drivers?

 

[Shodan]

How long did you let it load for?

It could be a damn long time as this is the first time you've played it.

Edit: Drivers are indeed crap, but you'd be suprised what you can fix by updating your drivers, cars, microwaves, anything.

 

[Babrook]

Well, the drivers arn't going to do a thing with a loading screen, and about 15 minutes.

 

[Foebane]

Wait, you say the drivers aren't going to do a thing (they could help, you know!) and you waited 15 minutes after jumping out the window!?

Wow, something's definitely wrong there!

 

[RaBiD WeAzEL]

Do this stuff:

1. Clear up some resources if you have a lot running in the background
2. Make sure all the drivers are up to date, although this does not really sound like a driver thing to me, it's always nice to keep your firware up to date.
3. Validate - Here <-- This is a link.

 

[Babrook]

Well, what drivers am I getting here? Graphics Card?

 

[Lahire149]

ATI Catalyst Drivers 5.8 (not with catalyst control center [that things a dang recsource hog]) get the ones with control panels instead.
Intel refrence chipset drivers.
Sound card drivers (depends on your card). These are just good to have, not much to do with loading though.
Um...defrag too

 

[jocky68]

Dont use the 5.8 for halflife 2, it screws up the water in the game. use 5.6.

 

[|Ben|]

No one realises how important defragmenting is. Let me tell you first hand that when I didn't know about defragmenting I would get slow loading times and all my programs would run sluggish. So, what I suggest to you is to defragment and see if that solves any of your really long loading times. Also, it is very important that you have the latest drivers for your graphics card. And also make sure you validate your files.

Try to defragment, and see if that helps any bit with overall preformance on everything. Also, I reccomend that you download Diskeeper 9 Trial at http://www.diskeeper.com/ and if you like the program, I highly suggest you purchase it. This program is wonderful at making sure your hard drive is running at optimal performance.