# Portal and Half Life 2: Episode 2 Freeze on Loading Screen



## Mearas (Sep 17, 2008)

I have read the steps!! (And done them...!)

Hi  I'm just about at my wits' end, and really hope somebody can help me. I purchased the Orange Box on Steam (direct download) when it was first released, last year. Up until 6 weeks ago, I could play all of the OB games without any problems whatsoever. Then, the next time I tried to play Portal, it just froze on the loading screen (the screen where the picture is blurry in the background while the menu is being loaded). During this freeze, there was little or no HDD activity at all, and I let it sit for 9 minutes before trying ctrl + alt + del, and then alt + tab, to no avail. I ended up having to hard reboot the PC. Now, this happens every time I try to play Portal, and Episode 2. 

Half Life 2, however, and Episode 1, both play beautifully - there's no loading problems whatsoever. I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling both games, my drivers are up to date, I connect to the internet in exactly the same way I have for the past 4 years, there are no additional pieces of software on my PC that would interfere. In other words, I had done absolutely nothing to change the PC setup that would cause any problems.

I lodged a support ticket with Valve, and followed the steps they gave me to try and resolve the issue, with no result. Out of frustration I backed up my PC, formatted, reinstalled Windows XP with SP3, installed the latest drivers for my system, reinstalled Steam and my OB games, and exactly the same thing is happening.  I just don't know what else to do.

I found this post http://www.techsupportforum.com/f59/half-life-2-crashes-on-loading-screen-resolved-146959.html and followed the steps in that post, but the games still won't run.

My specs:

Win XP Pro SP3 
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+, 2.21 GHz
3 GB DDR400 Dual Channel RAM
Gigabyte nVidia 7900GT (driver version 6.14.11.7519), PCI-e 256 MB
Hitachi S-ATA HDD, 80 GB
Gigabyte K8-SLI-Pro Motherboard
Thermaltake 400W PSU

My PC is approaching 4 yrs old, but I have not had any problems with it at all. It runs everything I need it to, and beautifully - including, up until 6 weeks ago - Portal and Episode 2.

If anybody can help me, I will be eternally grateful.

Thanks for reading.


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## Haxu (Oct 30, 2008)

ONE SOLUTION TO Portal and Half Life 2: Episode 2 Freeze on Loading Screen Problem

Hi,

Check out that your firewall is configured to accept connections for the game. My loading screen freeze was solved when I gave permission for firewall software to do just that.

Also try to add ´-startwindowed´ command to your game shortcuts command line. Right click the shortcut, select properties and in the target box add -startwindowed after everything else.
Example:
"C:\Program Files\Steam\Steam.exe" -applaunch 420 -no -dxlevel 90 +mat_forcehardwaresync 0 -startwindowed

That was the way I found out that my firewall software was asking permission on the background for the game. 

Hope this helped!

Cheers,

Sami Hakala
*** removed advertising url ***


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## 1337speeed (May 17, 2009)

i have the same problem but i just turnd on windows firewall n then it worked weird...


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