Issues with Half-Life 2 and Vista64

[NewSc2]

I have Boot Camp/Vista 64-bit on my Mac Pro, and for the most part everything works fine. I've been doing some music production work with Ableton Live and Reason, and I haven't really run into many issues.

I've been having problems running Half-Life 2, though. I downloaded Steam, and I can run the old Half-Life with no hiccups, but every time I start up Half Life 2, I see a flash of the intro wallpaper screen and then blackness, and it'll quit and I'll see the Vista desktop again.

I bought Half Life 2 Orange Box to see if that would clear anything up, but Ep 1 and Ep 2 won't load either.

Googling this issue came up with a few responses, including running Half-Life 2 under "Administrator", but I haven't found that option under Steam. I'm logged into Vista as an Administrator.

Also, I haven't been able to get my Aluminum Bluetooth Keyboard to work. It's a minor issue (I'm using the full-length one right now), but I have the latest Boot Camp drivers and Vista still won't find the bluetooth keyboard. Vista has found my MBP under Bluetooth, though, and the keyboard works fine under OSX.

EDIT: All this is making me consider downgrading to my old WinXP. Would I have better luck there?

 

[Mixu]

Disable 64-bit extensions in Half Life 2

I had also problems with starting up Half-life 2 in Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit. After digging around Steam Forums, and making couple of experiments (starting Episode 1 and 2 successfully and failing to start HL2 and HL2:Lost Coast) I realised that it was the 64-bit extensions that were causing problems (Episode 1 and 2 don't use them by default but Lost Coast and Half Life 2 do).

BTW, I have understood this is not a Mac specific problem, there are issues with Source engine's 64-bit support with other manufacturers PCs also. (Drivers etc.). When 64-bit drivers mature, Half Life 2 might work 64-bit enabled in the future.

To solve issues, just disable 64-bit extensions. Game works just fine in 32-bit mode even if you use Vista 64-bit.

Use launch option "-32bit" (without quotes)

From Steam support pages:

To access Launch Options for a game:

1. Open Steam
2. Go to the My Games tab
3. Right-click the game which needs to be reconfigured and select Properties
4. Click the Set launch options... button
5. Add the launch options you would like to use at the end of the line - be sure to include a space between launch options

For more launch options see this.

P.S. "-novid" is one of my favorites, disables Valve videos before startup, speeds up booting the game.

 

[NewSc2]

Wow, that totally worked. Thanks! It was bugging me forever -- I was dreading backing everything up and downgrading back to XP.

 

[Mixu]

Good, I'm glad that it helped. I dreaded that my suggestion wouldn't help, since I didn't notice this:

I bought Half Life 2 Orange Box to see if that would clear anything up, but Ep 1 and Ep 2 won't load either.

Just curious, are those games working now?