Help game won't load

[vbtiger]

Hi, I didn't have any problems playing Half Life 2 or Half Life Episode One. However, when I try to run Episode Two all I get to is the screen where it tries to load the main menu where you launch a saved game etc. It just sits there on the blurry type screen saying Loading in the lower right hand corner and it never clears and loads up.

I am running with a Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz and 1 Gig of RAM.

Thanks,
VBTiger

 

[McGooTheWise]

Did you check the cache files? Go into steam Games menu, right click on epsiode 2, click "Properties" and then click on the "Lcal Files" tab, then click "Verify Integrity of Game Cache".

If that doesn't help, you should probably get more ram.

 

[FishBulb]

Hey! I only have 1GB of RAM and Ep 2 works fine on my computer. But yeah, try verifying your game files.

Well, now I'm off to go cry about my 1GB of RAM...

 

[Laivasse]

What graphics card are you using? Try what Van_Halen says.

Also when in 'Properties', go to 'set launch options...', and paste '-novid -heapsize 512000 -console' (without quotes).

This will:

• skip the opening Valve video.
• make the game load without the 3d map background, so if your game is having trouble loading that for whatever reason it will skip that step.
• assign half your system's RAM for the game to use.

 

[vbtiger]

What graphics card are you using? Try what Van_Halen says.

Also when in 'Properties', go to 'set launch options...', and paste '-novid -heapsize 512000 -console' (without quotes).

This will:

• skip the opening Valve video.
• make the game load without the 3d map background, so if your game is having trouble loading that for whatever reason it will skip that step.
• assign half your system's RAM for the game to use.

My graphics card is a NVidia GeForce 7300 GT with 256 MB Ram.

 

[Laivasse]

Should run the game fine. Didn't any of those steps help?

 

[vbtiger]

Should run the game fine. Didn't any of those steps help?

Thanks for the suggestions. Unfortunately, it still sits there saying "Loading". One odd thing, which shouldn't matter, but for some reason Episode One's icon is the normal Half Life symbol. Episode Two's icon is the steam symbol. I know that shouldn't matter, but when I installed them off the Episode Pack I though it was strange they both didn't have the Half-Life symbol. I wonder if I just shouldn't uninstall Episode Two and try reinstalling it.

 

[Laivasse]

That is slightly strange. I bought my ones online, but they both have the standard HL symbol. There is no way to change the icon on those games so it at least suggests that something about your game files is different to mine. Are you sure you've verified the game cache files like Van Halen said?

If so and it still doesn't work, I would recommend a reinstall from the disc (make sure the CD/DVD is clean first). If that doesn't work, with your Steam account details you should be able to completely download Episode 2 from Steam, although I could understand if you didn't want to spend time doing that. I am inclined to think that there is something strange about your install due to the different icon, though, and downloading it would at least eliminate the possibility that it's something wrong with the game files.

Just a whim, but trying killing all unnecessary processes in Task Manager before you start the game, too.

 

[vbtiger]

That is slightly strange. I bought my ones online, but they both have the standard HL symbol. There is no way to change the icon on those games so it at least suggests that something about your game files is different to mine. Are you sure you've verified the game cache files like Van Halen said?

If so and it still doesn't work, I would recommend a reinstall from the disc (make sure the CD/DVD is clean first). If that doesn't work, with your Steam account details you should be able to completely download Episode 2 from Steam, although I could understand if you didn't want to spend time doing that. I am inclined to think that there is something strange about your install due to the different icon, though, and downloading it would at least eliminate the possibility that it's something wrong with the game files.

Just a whim, but trying killing all unnecessary processes in Task Manager before you start the game, too.

Well I went ahead and did like he said. It validated up to 100% and then close the window. I would guess if something was wrong it would have told me?

 

[Laivasse]

If you're still having the problem then I guess it didn't work anyway. Best to just try a full reinstall from CD or, if that fails, 'delete local content' then re-download the whole thing through Steam (you are enabled to because the game is listed under your account now).

 

[vbtiger]

If you're still having the problem then I guess it didn't work anyway. Best to just try a full reinstall from CD or, if that fails, 'delete local content' then re-download the whole thing through Steam (you are enabled to because the game is listed under your account now).

Well I was finally able to get it to run. I think the problem was ZoneAlarm. I re-installed the game and it still wouldn't work. So in addition to shutting down McAfee I shut down ZoneAlarm before I started and it loaded. So I tried a test thinking maybe ZoneAlarm was trying to do something and the popup window wasn't showing up. So I ran the game in a window w/o loading ZA. Then brought ZA up. Then shutdown HL2 and a ZA window popped up saying should I allow HL2 access. I said yes and then restarted HL2 and it loaded with ZA running.

I just had a hunch, but normally ZA's window pops up over the game so you can click on it. However, in the past its been known to not be on top of the game window. Since, I could never shutdown HL2 normally I never know ZA was trying to do something.

Anyway, thanks for all the suggestions. I probably should have been able to figure this out on my own, must be getting old.

 

[Laivasse]

Glad you got it sorted, Ep2 will rule you.