Last desperate plea

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Trevor Pavitt - 06 Mar 2007 15:51 GMT

Played HL2 whilst staying with my son in the US. Got about quarter way
through and *loved* it. Bought DVD.
Back in the UK I loaded the disk, pumped in authorization, got "100%
ready" message, hit "launch" and, after a pause, got:
"HL2 has had to close blah, blah"
Tried everything I knew before contacting Steam Support. For the last
8 weeks I've been in touch with them by email on a weekly basis (it
takes them that long to process each email). On their instructions
I've downloaded latest drivers, done memtests, sent config files and
deleted or disabled various programs. All to no avail.
My machine is 18months old (Dell Dim9100, Pentium 4, 1GB RAM, GeForce
6800) running XP Pro and if I buy a game I expect to be able to put
the disk in the drive, enter my authorization code and have it work. I
can't remember any other game where this was not the case.
I'm thoroughly fed up with Valve, Steam et al but would still like to
play HL2 so I am appealing to you clever Usenet people before I bin
the game and kiss bye bye to my 30 bucks.

Has anybody had this problem and does *anybody* have an answer?
Any suggestions would win my eternal gratitude.

Trevor
www.trevorpavitt.co.uk

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Andy Hawkins - 06 Mar 2007 17:20 GMT

Hi,

> Has anybody had this problem and does *anybody* have an answer?

Haven't had a problem, but I *think* you should be able to uninstall
everything, clean out your Steam folder, and then just install Steam. Then,
you can use the 'Activate a product I already own' link in the Steam store
(sorry, don't know exactly where it is) and have it download HL2 rather than
installing from DVD.

If you're lucky, that might work.

Good luck

Andy

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Shawk - 06 Mar 2007 18:15 GMT

> Played HL2 whilst staying with my son in the US. Got about quarter way
> through and *loved* it. Bought DVD.
[quoted text clipped - 16 lines]
> Has anybody had this problem and does *anybody* have an answer?
> Any suggestions would win my eternal gratitude.

Have you tried verifying the game cache files?...

Load Steam. From 'My Games' tab, right-click on the game and select
'Properties'. Select 'Local Files' and click 'Verify Integrity of Game
Cache'. It'll take a while.

Also...

http://support.steampowered.com/cgi-bin/steampowered.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php
?p_faqid=517

http://support.steampowered.com/cgi-bin/steampowered.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php
?p_faqid=397

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McG. - 06 Mar 2007 18:51 GMT

> Played HL2 whilst staying with my son in the US. Got about quarter way
> through and *loved* it. Bought DVD.
[quoted text clipped - 19 lines]
> Trevor
> www.trevorpavitt.co.uk

Along with what Andy and Shawk have already said; In your nVidia
control panel, you set up "profiles" for various applications (games
mostly). You can select a few different profiles already set for
hl2.exe, which will turn on some things useful for the game, and turn
OFF some things in the driver that the game itself needs to be able to
set. I have seen where leaving AA set in the driver has caused a crash
to desktop and that same generic error. This is really the simplest of
the three offerings to try, you might do this first. Failing this, DO
what Shawk said fully. The game has been updated hugely since that DVD
was pressed. If you do like Shawk says you will get the most recent
stuff that seems most stable, more optimized and even looks better.
HTH,
McG.

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Trevor Pavitt - 07 Mar 2007 11:23 GMT

Thanks for your quick response guys, I'll try what you suggest.

Cheers,
Trevor
www.trevorpavitt.co.uk

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