Okay, so I have been playing HL2 for about 5 hours now. Now, the rotten bastard refuses to load up. What happens precisely is that I start the game, I get the Valve logo, and then I get to the menu screen. It's when the menu screen is still loading, when there's nothing but a blurry version of the picture that's going to be used for the background and the word "Loading" in the corner, that things go to shit. What first happens is the program autominimzes into the tray. I try to restore the window, and that's when it gets weird. Basically, the window does restore, but it's invisible. That is to say, I can't see the game and I can only see my desktop as well as any other windows that I have open, but I can't interact with them. I don't say that my computer has locked up entirely because I can still alt-tab out of HL2, allowing me to manipulate my desktop normally. Up to this point, the task manager thinks that the program is running just fine.  And that's my problem.
 
Now, I have already reinstalled the game(by which I mean telling steam to "Delete Local content" and then deleting it myself before installing it again), and I have tried rebooting the computer(how I miss the days when that could solve any problem on windows). I am at a loss of what to try. I'm going to try reinstalling steam itself next, though I can not fathom how that can help. I guess I ought to note that this only started happening after the recent patch. I do not want to say that Valve would release a patch that effectively breaks their game, but the correlation is there. 
 
So, any suggestions on where I should go from here?

Do you actually have a real videocard? Do you have enough ram to load anything?

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Do you actually have a real videocard? Do you have enough ram to load anything?

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Yes I do have a proper graphics card and 4GB of RAM. Would you have me post my specs?

Okay, reinstalling worked as expected, which is to say not at all. Any suggestion? At all? I'm at a loss here.

" Okay, reinstalling worked as expected, which is to say not at all. Any suggestion? At all? I'm at a loss here. "

1. Try adding -novid to launch arguments. If it works, don't ask why.
2. Close programs which are known to interfere with steam
3. Open a steam support ticket
   

I guess it was the resolution thing, as Supermarius' suggestion worked. It's the strangest thing. I was running both HL2 and my computer at the same resolution. I won't question it, I'll just play in windowed from now on. Thanks guys.

" I guess it was the resolution thing, as Supermarius' suggestion worked. It's the strangest thing. I was running both HL2 and my computer at the same resolution. I won't question it, I'll just play in windowed from now on. Thanks guys. "