A question...

[Laguna Loire]

...for all those who own Half-Life 2.

I was on Amazon yesterday to see how much they were selling HL2 for. While looking at the startlingly low price, I decided to read some of the reviews for it. And the contents of some of the reviews worried me. Aparently, while installing the game, Steam needs to be installed to verify the game and make sure it's an actual copy, not a pirated copy. This would be fine if Steam actually worked on my computer. I am concerned that I'm going to spend £30 on a game that might not work on my computer because of Steam. So, my question. Could someone who owns, and has successfully installed HL2 on their computer, tell me the installation process of it? This may sound like a dumbass question to some, but I am concerned as I have had some serious problems with Steam in the past...

[CloneX7]

It's not a dumb question at all; its one of the main reasons people don't but Half-Life 2. Personally my installation took about all of 35 seconds to install steam(but i have 2 gigs and a 3.6 proccesser, so yours might be a little slower) but half-life 2 was another story. It took maybe 30 minutes to install and than you have to verify your account and create an account. Never the less, even if it does take hours, or if you have to leave it on over night, it is well worth it. I'm kind of confused, did you already try to install steam and it didnt work? Please post your specs and your download rate, than i can determine if you could..

[cHilli]

and was the problem with it not working?

[Laguna Loire]

I've got Steam on my computer, but when it needs to update itself, it stops on 27% and a window comes up saying Steam.exe (main exception): ERROR: delete of Steam.exe failed, Win32 Error 5 "Access is denied"....I've tried everything to stop this but nothing has worked. I fear this will come up when I'm trying to install HL2 as well.

Oh yeah, I've got a 2.08 GHz processor, and I don't know my download speed but I know it's low because I'm using a 56K internet.

[CloneX7]

wait a minute...you have steam, yet you dont have Half-Life 2? Or are you downloading Half-Life 2 off of steam?

The only thing I can think off that would stop the update is other programs in the background. Try turning off everything else, vuris protection included. If that doesnt work, its going to be the firewall or router that your computer is behind. you can either turn them off of recognize Steam.exe. Even two network cards can **** up steam.exe, its very sensative. You might need to open the ports that steam uses to access the internet; UDP 1200, UDP 27000 to 27015 inclusive, TCP 27015 to 27039 inclusive(I got these off the hl2 website). Your internet could be to blaim, since it's 56k. Here is a very useful website that could solve your problems, http://www.dslreports.com/tools. AND if all that fails, you can uninstall and reinstall steam.exe, since its likely that it could be corupted.phew.

[Laguna Loire]

I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling Steam before. No luck. Steam used to work even though I had 56K internet but now it just comes up with that error message. How do you open those ports? I've already tried disabling my firewall and my anti-virus system and still no luck....I'm getting HL2 for Christmas. I think my dad's already bought it for me, so if it doesn't work, I'll have to sell it or something...

[cHilli]

look up the steam troubleshooter on steampowered.com its good

It all works for me on dial up BTW

[Laguna Loire]

^ Yeah, I tried that too. It's likely because of all the spyware I've got on my computer. I use Ad-Aware to get rid of it, but it comes back...Yesterday, I discovered I had like 6 trojan horses on my computer...

[CloneX7]

there is a great cure for that. if you can remember when you first started to get it, you can preform a system restore, works for me. and i still dont understand how you have steam, and you dont have hl2 and you've attempted to download updates off of steam..

edit: for the ports, if you dont know how to do it, i suggest going to Steam forums and asking for help there, its hard to explain and they can do a much better job

[Laguna Loire]

You can download Steam off the net. Steam was out wayyyy before HL2 came out. It was used to play CS 1.6 and still is...

As for the system restore, that's the most obvious solution, except I have no idea when I first downloaded Steam and even if I did, my dad probably wouldn't let me because we'd lose a load of important data and stuff so...basically, I'm screwed. Thanks anyway guys.