Help with HL2 and Steam

[GTSRguy]

Posted this on XS, posting here also to get extra help.

im trying to play half life 2. When i go to play HL2 in steam, it gives me an error. Tried it again and it says the game is currently unavailable [wtf]. When i was playing it yesterday, it was freezing and looping the audio then crashing, followed by "display driver stopped working" followed by a blue screen. INFRNL suggested that this was because my GPU was overclocked, so i rolled it back to stock settings, but now am unable to even get in the game. Also, i cannot open up steam. i closed it, and then re-opened it, it says "steam is already running", aparently is isnt, because i just closed it and its not in my system tray. So i went into processes, and shut down steam. Now i go to open up steam and nothing happens. nothing opens, its back open in processes (not apps) but i can not view or see steam anywhere

I also get this error when i boot up my computer, and when i was installing 186 drivers for my 285. 190+ drivers were messing up my GPU while folding to i rolled them back.

One of the main reasons i bought my desktop was so i could play half life (cant play it on a 12" laptop), and im very disapointed that i STILL cannot play it due to problem after problem.

 

[zerocool84]

Maybe your Steam install got corrupted since you can't even load up Steam.

 

[GTSRguy]

ill uninstall steam, and reinstall and see if that fixes anything

 

[Brutus04]

Looks like your system definitley will support Half-Life...what OS are you running?

Recommend visit the forumsa at Steam for answers, possibly reload STEAM.
STEAM

I play Half-life 2 DeathMatch at Franks' Hangout...I'd love ta kill ya a few times eh?

 

[GTSRguy]

if i get it working ill do some deathmatch.

Currently uninstalling steam, will be a while before all my games are re-downloaded...

*Running Vista Ultimate 64

 

[jdjbuffalo]

GTSRguy, you don't have to delete the whole Steam folder and redownload everything... All you need to do is go download a copy of Steam from their website and reinstall it over itself. That will fix almost all Steam issues.

It might be possible that there is something wrong with your copy of half life but I wouldn't go redownloading it until you look at your Nvidia graphics driver issue. If you're getting errors on startup then you need to look at those first and get them fixed.

 

[GTSRguy]

in uninstalled steam, and reinstalled from their website, gave me and error (steam is unavalible or some dumb shit like that) when signing in and steam wont open up now.

If anyone wants to try and get this fixed for themselves, their welcome to log into my computer using www.logmein.com, works really great and easy to use.

 

[GTSRguy]

ok reinstalled again and reset my password and now steam is opening up. Did this while on my laptop (from class) via Logmein. When i get out of class ill see if HL2 runs

btw, it has to reinstall& re download all my games so im having it do that

 

[zerocool84]

Originally posted by: GTSRguy
ok reinstalled again and reset my password and now steam is opening up. Did this while on my laptop (from class) via Logmein. When i get out of class ill see if HL2 runs

btw, it has to reinstall& re download all my games so im having it do that

Did you read what jdjbuffalo said? I do what he does so I don't have to redownload everything. Do you run Steam as admin?

 

[GTSRguy]

i did exactly what jdbuff did, reinstalled a copy over itself, and steam is having me re-download and install everything. (dont ask me why)

Once HL2 is done updating/installing/downloading idk what its doing, i can see if it opens. Then, if it opens, ill see if the freezing/crashing/looping has stopped.

 

[GTSRguy]

Steam is all rebooted and reinstalled and all re-done comepltly, and its doing the same thing. I had steam open, and i closed it, and now it wont re-open. I open steam, and nothing at all happens. It says steam.exe is running in processes...anyone know how to get it to open up? This is really frustrating me, not surprising at all why so many people choose to play games on consoles

 

[Mike Gayner]

End Steam in the process manager, delete clientregistry.blob from the Steam folder and restart Steam. But that wont fix your obvious driver issue. Install the latest WHQL drivers from nvidia.

 

[GTSRguy]

Ill install the newest driver, but last time i had a 190+ drivers, it was under clocking my card during folding to half, killing my PPD. Thats why i rolled back to 186.xx drivers. The coloration on the screen is also messed up. Also, when originally upgraded to new drivers i didnt uninstall my old driver, not sure if that matters.

/faceplam

 

[Mike Gayner]

TBH you don't really sound like you know what you're doing enough to be overclocking, so leave that alone. Uninstall the current drivers and reinstall the latest WHQL certified drivers.

 

[GTSRguy]

*sigh*

Again, the WHQL 190.xx drivers are underclocking my core to 400 and my shader to 700 which is part of some power save mode built into the new drivers. So i have to stick with older drivers so that i can get normal folding PPD.

Just forget about it, sorry i asked

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Forget the folding bullshit and get your games working first. That power saving thing is probably configurable. Welcome to the wonderful world of Steam.

 

[Malak]

The underclocking thing... are you only testing it in Windows or during a game? Because those powersaver things are actually a good thing. They save... power. And stuff.

 

[Ramma2]

I was getting a very similar error (not available or the like) when trying to launch HL2, running Vista home premium 64 bit. There's a 64 bit flag in the command line I had to set when launching HL2 and it has worked perfectly ever since then.

I'm in class at the moment, but if you like I can get that command when I get home and post it. Took me forever to fix it last time, and I can't find it now. Let me know.

 

[zagood]

1. Newest WHQL is 191.07.
2. Add the text "-32bit" (without quotes) to launch properties.
3. Disable in-game community.

You may need to install RivaTuner and create a Scheduler item so when you start Folding it loads stock clocks.