What's really going on?

[jaimescott]

Whenever I try to start HL2 my computer locks with a white screen just after a blurry (city?) screen with ''loading...'' in the lower right corner. I don't get any error messages and sometimes the white screen will have a red checker board pattern with a sqaure in the center of vetical red and white bars. This happens with both HL2 and CS:s. I've got a GeForce Ti 4200 with the 66.93 drivers installed, sb Audigy with the latest drivers and a P4 1.6 with 516mb. I selected properties for HL2 and I have all 100% of the game loaded. CS:s is at 43% however. I'm not concerned about playing CS:s though. What's going on here? I tried to start a technical help chat session on the steampowered web site but after a 30 min wait in line I was told all their people were busy and to try again later. Any suggestions?

 

[Pippinator]

ok dude, its loading a in-game menu

if you change the hl2 short-cut to include -console in teh parameters then it won't load this.

try and play the game with the -console command.

if that works, it's probably just a bug which'll get fixed at some point.

latest drivers?

 

[psalm]

Could be the memory read bug, but really I'm not sure.

 

[jaimescott]

Just after making my original post I came across the -console suggestion in another thread. Loading the game that way allows me to navigate the game menues but still no luck starting an actual game. When I start a new game a black screen appears with a loading bar which takes five minutes to fill than it disapears and my screen goes white. The only way to recover is to power down the computer.