HL2 Freezing at Fuzzy City Picture Loading screen, anyone else?

H

HotL3@D

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Oct 5, 2000
Messages
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as the title says, HL2 is just freezing at the Loading screen. The valve logo pops up and then it goes into loading and will just sit there forever... I cant figure out what the problem may be...
 
mine did this until I disabled my secondary monitor. could have been a coincedence, but I tried 2 times and it froze. disabled and it worked.
 
IDversusEGO said:
mine did this until I disabled my secondary monitor. could have been a coincedence, but I tried 2 times and it froze. disabled and it worked.
Click to expand...

No secondary monitor here... Just after i posted this, i tried again and it booted right up and i played for a short time. I'm playing at 1600x1200 and i'm surprised at how well this game plays at that resolution! i think i threw around bottles and cans for about 20 minutes..hehe..
 
Me too! I spent a good 20 minutes doing this:

/me picks up soda can
/me throws it at combine guard
/me runs away "kekekekekekek"


rinse, repeat with other objects like cinder blocks and trash cans. :D
 
Mine did this when I let the Steam "Play Games" browser stay open while trying to play. I'm not sure if that is the exact reason, but when I cut it off after initializing the game, it worked fine.
 
I suffered from this too and the fix is to right click on HalfLife2 entry in the steam list then click on properties. It should have a status of the preload. I thought mine is done but the properties still showed 57% and i saw it change to 58% so i guess it is not done preloading. Just keep it open like this until you see 100% or something else before starting the game.

Those who played a little before entering, you might be at 99% and when it worked, it just finished it.
 
Oh, I hate the f***ing game, heres my story ;)
I started installing yesterday ivening and all went well until i tried to start the game.... nothing happened :confused: tried a few times more, always the same effect. After that i deinstalled steam and half-life, reinstalled it and... same story again. In the end I changed the DVD from my Benq-DVD burner to my old lite-on dvd-rom and it started without any problem. Ok 2 hours wasted...
After another 2 great hours of gaming suddenly black screen and some clicking noises out of all 5 speakers, ok, I reset the machine and start again. Just after the loading of my savegame finished same problem again, black screen, clicking noises. This happens now everytime I want to load my game, loading finishes and BOOM, f***, the damn thing has to be started again. I reinstalled directx, my ATI driver Audigy drivers... everything I think, its not working. End of story: Im getting a bit angry and will continue gaming on NFSU2 till HL2 is done :p.
 
I have yet to get into the game. I start it and get the valve guy and the copyright info.... Then get screen that says loading in the bottom right... and sits there. System locks hard and i have to reset.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Specs
A7V333 (no overclock, memory timing set to crappy to try to fix)
2.0+ AMD
1Gig 2100 ram
Asus 9600xt (using 4.11 Cat)
Soundblaster Live (not sure on driver version, but are latest i could get from site)
DirectX 9.0C

Doom3, WoW, Guildwars, CoH all working on this machine just fine....
 
I had this problem on HL2 an dHL:S when I didn't close the "Play Games" menu before the game actually began loading (You know, the few seconds in between clicking the game and it actually taking over the system resources). Not sure if that was just a coincidence though.
 
Well crap! I could have swore i saw it was done before i tryed to play it... I will have to go back and check on my lunch break.

Also sorry for the multi-post on this. I didn't see that topic.. and searching HL2 showed a million entries. :p

Ya know.. i really don't like steam...

Thanks for the topic merge...
 
Milkman said:
Well crap! I could have swore i saw it was done before i tryed to play it... I will have to go back and check on my lunch break.

Also sorry for the multi-post on this. I didn't see that topic.. and searching HL2 showed a million entries. :p

Ya know.. i really don't like steam...
Click to expand...
yea the download finishes, like the bar goes all the way across, and the game is ready to play, but in reality its not fully downloaded. way to go steam!
 
Yeah, it think they fucked up on the status check. I think that when there is a timeout occuring, the bar filled up thus triggering the "game is ready to be played". I hope Steam fix his client to avoid this issue in the future.
 
I just bought HL2 and installed all fine and everything registered it on steam and then when I goto play it it doesn't load. It shows the preparing to play hl2 steam thing and then it dissapears and nothing happens anyone know why this is?
 
Nope.. and i have tried to let steam finish downloading????? but no go for me.

When i check the properties of the game, its says "Ready to Play" and amount aquired says 100%

Any other ideas?
 
i made sure to close the play games window on steam and that seems to solve the problem.
 
OH so close... doing that gets me to see a faded menu beginning to come up.. and then locks...

Also tried to make a desktop shortcut and not have steam running... but it seems to start steam anyway... still trying...
 
I had the same problem guys, it sat there with a blurry city scene and saying "Loading" at the bottom right. Then I realized my modem was going haywire.. so I waited figuring it was downloading some lame update :/ .. I waited and watched TV and it finally came up.
 
Did this to me too, it does it when you first play the game just wait.
 
Found a fix... or rather someone else did on halflife2.net

Here's a possible fix. I found it took ages to load the menu, and the reason is because instead of just being a picture in te background like in CSS, it's a cinematic-type thing (Think similar to the looping movie on Far Cry's title screen). All it shows is a random city scene with people walking around, so I disabled it, and it now loads up the menu much faster.
To disable it:
1. Get into your Cfg folder in your HL2 folder in Steam.
2. There are two files in there: Config.cfg and Valve.RC
3. Open Valve.RC in notepad (Might want to back it up first)
4. The bottom option looks like this:

// Display the Startup level
startupmenu

5. Either delete "startupmenu" or put two slashes in front of it to disable the level. The game should now load. Works with HL:Source too, just do the same thing to the Valve.rc file in your source folder.
Click to expand...

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=52684

Im watching the intro video right now....

Edit: Nevermind... freezes when i try to exit the train...
 
If you right click the game in Steam and check properties, I bet it isn't 100% loaded, although it says ready to play. That's what happened to me with my HL1:S, it said ready to play, but only 95% downloaded, and it hung at the fuzzy screen. Never know, maybe it's missing a couple of percentage points and you have to kick it to get the rest.
 
hl: source did this until i updated my drivers to 66.07 (or whatever the newest ones are)

so try some new drivers
 
I wish it was that simple.. but as i have already posted no go for me. CS:S doesn't run on my PC either, and locks up on the video test.

So.. why this game doesn't work, but Doom3, WoW, Guildwars, BF:V, etc does. Does it use some new directX settings/features the other games dont use? Do those other games all use OpenGL instead? Is there a bios setting or advanced setting in my video card/sound card that could cause it? Or is this a bug in their game?
 
When the fuzzy picture comes up it seems like it takes a really long time to load to main menu.
 
Well, i had an old hard drive laying around so figured i would test and see if there is something installed or messed up on my current config. After installing XP fresh, running windows updates and installing HL2....

It still locks up!!!!!

Is anyone running HL2 sucessfully with...

A7V333 MB
9600XT
Intergrated sound
OR
SoundBlaster live

If so, what driver versions you using? What bios version? What Bios settings? Any special tweaks???

Thanks to anyone who can help...
 
it does that the first time you get on it, fear not though, its the only time it will take half a day to load
 
I told you guys the solution to this earlier.

Close the "Play Games" and Steam menus before the game actually takes over your monitor. That fixed the problem for me with all the Steam applications (This happened in several of them).
 
Nope, i finally found the fix. I had to disable AGP Fast Write in the bios. I dug around for generic DirectX instability problems and that was a suggested fix for newer ATI cards.

Why this game doesn't like it but others are just fine, i have no idea.
 
I started getting this amongst other problems.

Well heres my story. I was playing the game fine pretty much maxed out at 1280x960.
Below is the point in the game where I starting having porblems, which has led to it becomming unplayable.

**** SPOILER ****

I am at the part where you get into the citadel and acquire the new 133t gravity gun.(blue spinning core) I was able to play through that and then got to a level transition.

**** /end SPOILER ****

When this happened right after the pause for autosave the game starts back up for about a second and then I get a memory error and the game crashes to desktop. This really sucks .... but I thought this might be virii / adware on my comp. So I defragged my hardrive virus scanned and eliminated all adware.... Still the problem persists. So I decided to erase all game content (except for save games) and when I loaded the game up I noticed a really long pause on the blurry main menu. I eventually just went for a shower and came back and the main menu was finally up. So I tried to load the game and still the problem crashing to desktop occurs but there is now no error message.

So now I am sufficently frustrated.... but considering how [H]ard I am, I am going to completly format my hardrive to see if this helps. Yes I have the updated steam and all that...

One more thing ... After the first crash , defrag , virus scan etc ... I was getting a msg from steam when I tried to start HL2 abiout game files being wrong or something and steam redownloading them. But it seemed it was locked in a cycle and it just kept happening.

So I was wondering if before I totally erase everything if there would be a solution anyone might be able to suggest. Keep in mind all my drivers / bios everything was updated to the latest version mobo,graphics card ... everything.....
 
if you are getting a memory error, have you tried checking hte memory? if the game is trying to access a faulty area of the dimm, its gonna BSOD ya, run memtest and see what it returns

and in regards to your *********SPOILER************
that part was awesome, i almost pissed my pants when i figured out you could now get bodies with the gun :D

****************ENDSPOILER***************
 
lithium726 said:
if you are getting a memory error, have you tried checking hte memory? if the game is trying to access a faulty area of the dimm, its gonna BSOD ya, run memtest and see what it returns
Click to expand...

Yes I am going to do this tonight, after work, before I totally lose my mind and format....
I just dont understand how I can run doom 3, farcry, and HL2 for that long all without problems ... then all of a sudden it just craps out. It is very frustrating.

***************spoiler******************

I know this part is amazing .... I first ripped a huge computer out of the wall and that was cool to ruin someone with it .... but then when I was able to throw bodies around it blew my mind. I just want to get back in and do it some more :(
************ spoiler******************
 
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