I purchased HL2 today, and it will not load. Every time I try to load it, it kicks right back out to the steam main page. I cannot find any info about this type of problem. No error messages or anything. I have tried using different resolutions, but that doesn't help.

Specs:
XP 3200
1 gig ram
Radeon X700

Well, after much research it would seem there are a number of things that cause this issue. One was with VIA chipset motherboards. Doesn't apply to me (NForce 2). Then there are issues with optical drives not being able to read the disk (I have a drive that is newer than the game). Driver issues (I have all current drivers). So, at this point I cannot find any reason this game should not run. The self diagnosis program on Steams site says everything on my computer checks out. This is a 4 day old installation of XP. No anti-virus software. This is a real PITA. So if anyone has any other suggestions I would be most happy to listen to them.

1 Card Drivers are up to date.
2. Make sure your Steam client is not on "Offline mode" so you can get all the updates.

if that stuff don't work:

In your games list right click on Half Life 2 and click on launch properties. in the text feild type without the quotes "-window" or it could be "-window mode"

See if that will launch your game. If it does play normal in a window mode then it might mean you resolution is to high if your using a CRT and the Video Card is having problems keeping up.

If all fails head over to www.steampowered.com and search your problem there. I'm sure someone has the same problem your having.

Tried gutting the resolution to 800X600 and that didn't help. I just downloaded the video card driver yesterday. The window mode does get it to start to bring up a window, but doesn't do anything. Deathmatch will play the intro video, then kicks out like HL2. Lost Coast does the same thing as HL2. Steam's help section has nothing on this. The only thing I can find about this is http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic17022-4.html but all the solutions there have not helped me any. My gut says this is some kind of video problem. But the card is good and the driver is current. That leaves something in the software, which I have not been able to find. Thanks for the help.

Have you tried Sierra's tech support? Seems like that would be the first place to go.....

Goto tech support, there is a way of doing this, it happened to me, it would not run with 4xAA.

Load steam, click games tab, right click on halflife2 and click properties. Click the general tab, then click on the "set launch options..." button.

in the next window you should see " -condebug " after this type:

" -autoconfig"

make sure you put a space after the " -condebug" (obviously not in the quotation marks).

this will launch halflife2 with the default settings that should work.

failing that, look further into the tech support pages on steam.

I have tried numerous launch options, none of them have worked. Steam support mentions nothing of this problem. I finally emailed them and am currently waiting for a response. I picked a friends brain at work today about this and he thought I had covered all the bases. I am pretty convinced this is some kind of video related problem. Probably caused by a software issue. I am curious what the Steam team tells me. I thank you for all your help.

Mine didn't work for the first 6 months I owned it. I had to go in and delete my bin folder (you may want to make a backup of it somewhere else on your hard drive just in case) then restart HL2.

C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\email@email.com\half-life 2\bin

That one.
I think mine was giving me a windows error, though. Many people have had many problems with HL2.

Does this happen with other games as well?
I faced something similar a week ago with all my DirectX games, where everytime I load a game, I'm kicked back to the desktop and the game minimizes and refuses to be restored.
Turns out it was a software problem, and a process, namely XBoxStat.exe, was the cause. Apparently, it shouldn't be left running if the wireless adapter is not connected to the PC.
Run DxDiag, click the display tab, and try running the DirectX tests, if the same thing happens there, then this problem is not specific to HL2 and you should look into what processes you have running and start an elimination process one by one, until it works.