Problems with Half Life 2

I got the orange box for the pc today and tried loading up half life 2 but it took 5 minutes to get to the menu screen and about 7 minutes to start a game.During the game it froze a few times and when I was in the building running from the guards the game froze and didn't start back up.

Why is it running so bad on my computer?

My specs are

Vista Premium 64 bit

Intel Core 2 Duo Q8200 @2.33 GH/z

4gb DDR2 Ram

NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GS

I just reloaded the auto save and everyone is frozen and a pop up is saying "AI Disabled".

that's very odd indeed, parrticularly since your spec looks absolutely fine.

i'd try defragging the game files in Steam (right click on Half-Life 2 -> properties -> local files -> defragment cache files) and if that doesn't work, perhaps verify the game files (in the same window, "Verify integrity of game cache") as they might be corrupted.

have you tested Portal? it uses the same engine, so if it was a hardware problem it should theoretically happen there too..... it would actually be better to test episodes 1 & 2 but playing either of them even for a few minutes will spoil the plot.

Portal and TF2 work fine it's just Half Life 2 that doesn't.

just got the orange box my self a few days ago, first 24Hrs were a night mare, as steam updates all the patches ect, but once it is all done it has settled down and all works fine. think your GFX card might be a bit under powered, I was running episode one a while back on a 8800gt 340 and was having frame rate issues at 1680 x 1050,stuttering and freezing. I had to reduce the settings a bit.

I don't thinks it's my graphics card as I can play TF2 and Portal with everything on high with no problems

I think I've fixed it.I did a search and u have to run it on 32 bit instead of 64.