won't load past valve logo, why?

[Da_Uber_Bom]

i just downloaded and installed hl2 off steam, but as soon as the valve logo appears upon starting, the game pauses. Has anyon else experienced this and managed to fix it?

 

[beam]

Right click on HL-2 in the steam menu and select properties, make sure the game is 100%.....sometimes it looks like it's ready to play but it isn't. You can also try to get rid of the startup video and see what happens. I think you put +no video in the launch options or in the Command line of your desktop shortcut in order to keep the video from loading.....not positive though