Trouble Playing Half-Life 2!

I bought it from a store.

Make sure you're video card drivers and DirectX are up to date.

Also, especially if you downloaded the game through Steam, but even if you just installed it from CD's, check the game files for their integrity. To do this, open Steam, go to My Games, right click on Half Life 2, and click Properties. Go to the Local Files tab, click "Verify Integrity of game cache", and it will take a while scanning your game files.

If neither of these work, nor do Citan76's ideas, I think we'd need some more info to fix it. Or you could try http://www.steampowered.com.

Well the Error Report said this, "This problem was caused by Half-Life 2 Game Engine. Half-Life 2 Game Engine was created by Valve Corporation. Microsoft has been unable to contact the manufacturer and has no further information available at this time." Now I have no idea what Half-Life 2 Game Engine is so... Yeah.