Counter-Strike Problem

[geno]

Ran into a problem today. Decided I wanted to play a little CS 1.6, which I haven't done in months, if not over a year. Went to launch the game from steam, showed the "Preparing to launch" thing for a couple seconds, and then nothing. The game didn't pop up.

When I try again, it says the game is unavailable. I went and checked my process manager, and sure enough hl.exe *32 is running. But the game is not up, and I have no idea why.

Closing the process and trying again did nothing. Neither did restarting steam, or for that matter my computer. Defragging and verifying integreity of cache didnt help. Neither did deleting local content and redownloading. I tried a lot of different launch options and tried changing Clientregistry.blob. Nothing has worked, or even shown any promise.

I have noticed that every time I try to start the game and have to ctrl+alt+del the hl.exe process, another rundll32.exe pops up in my task manager. I have no idea if that is significant, but I thought I'd mention it.

Any suggestions? This problem is getting very frustrating. I'm usually pretty good at googling the hell out of my own problems until I solve them, but this one is a real bitch and has taken a couple hours from me. I know its going to end up being a simple problem/fix but I just cant figure this out

[The_OG_Nelta]

You can try actually uninstalling it from your computer, and installing it again through steam.

[geno]

I thought that was handled via Delete local content option in Steam? The game itself doesn't show up in my control panel>add/remove, nor is there an actual uninstall file in the directory. After deleting local content, it says uninstalled in my games list as well.

[The_OG_Nelta]

Interesting, its in my add/remove, as well as every other game from my steam list.

[geno]

Hmm, when I checked that, I had just deleted local content. Since I redownloaded the game, I just checked again and it is listed. Either way though, that just reaffirms my belief that deleting local content is akin to uninstalling, except probably cleaner. Need more suggestions!

[fishstix]

Are you running any firewalls? maybe it's blocking the game from connecting to the servers, so doesnt launch

[geno]

Windows firewall isnt up, I have my router but I have all the ports forwarded for counter strike and half life.

[geno]

A little while ago, I tried to load it on my brother's account. It popped up a new error for me, saying the game had failed to load in OpenGL the previous time it was opened and that it would run in software mode. And boom, it came up. I still wanted to be able to play on my account (and on OpenGL) so I kept messing with it. I ended up updating the newest DirectX and Catalyst Drivers (9.11). After a restart, now Steam itself is having the same problem (appears in processes but will not open). Reinstalled Steam completely, and this is still the case.

This is going to be the death of me.

[geno]

Man things were getting progressively worse. After trying to downgrade drivers, I ran into problems with drivers not loading correctly and my resolution screwing up. I eventually got the newest drivers working again, but after some restarts, every program I tried to open began having the same problem illustrated above.

And then a miracle happened. One last restart you (without changing anything mind you) fixed all of those, bringing me back to the steam problem. Then my brother suggested changing shit in the compatibility tab for Steam. Steam is supposed to NOT be run under WinXPSP2 compatibility for Vista, and I had it checked that way, but I also decided to glance into the "Show settings for all users" button this time and it was checked for compatibility mode. I don't know how or why this happened, but it did.

I unchecked it and Steam was running. I checked hl.exe in cstrike directory and it had the same checkmark. I changed that and that was working. I still feel like I should reformat at some point soon with all the random problems I've been running into after restarts, but hopefully I can keep this working state for a bit longer. What a wasted day.