Ok, so I finally bought the orange box. Hooray for me, I'm a year behind the times. Anyways, none of the games I got new with it (TF2 and Episode 2) work! They load the opening company logos and copyrights, and give me the blurry menu loading screen for a few seconds. Then it quits and gives me 'Error: No permissions to run 'ep2'' or 'Error: No permissions to run 'tf'. Dubble-you-tee-eff, mate?? I'll be damned if I get robbed out of playing the games I just paid $40 for.

Valve tech support, steam forums.

Right-click. Run as administrator. Or turn UAC control off.

What? Steam works fine on Vista without me doing that.
OB included.

This would be what you would want to do if you were an idiot.

UAC is useful for those people who don't know how to protect themselves, with someone with even the littlest computer knowledge - its completely useless and an annoyance.




Googled the problem, some people seemed to have it, and that was the solution. Just because it did not happen to you does not mean it has not happened to others.

Turn UAC off.

Turns out I had to restart Steam. Who'da thunkit.

remember without UAC there would be no BFG

I don't know. The ball was dropped with the last BFG model and was actually substituted by the DMG in Q4.

I'm sorry, I don't have faith in UAC anymore.

you kids with your strogg war... you weren't there when mars fell man you don't know what it was like

UAC also provides other benefits, such as letting you run IE in protected mode (if you use IE), and most importantly, processes don't start with administrative privileges, making it much harder to exploit any software on your system. It does more than just throw popups at you. You can expose yourself to malicious software without visiting shady crack and porn sites, even if it is rare for an experienced user.

Nevertheless, it can be annoying, which is why I think Vista should have a built in and easy way to use the "quiet mode" provided by TweakUAC. This is the same as setting auto-elevation for administrative users via policy. In this mode you get the above benefits without so many annoying UAC popups.

Oh and SP1 seems to make UAC less annoying and also more functional. For example, if you ran an application under normal privileges, you wouldn't be able to say, save a file to C:\Windows or extract a file (with a ZIP utility) to such a protected directory. Now you get a prompt and are able to do that.

Fine, use the 9K model. Atleast we use 10k and aren't afraid of upgrades.

yea, its a good idea to do that everytime you get a game off steam

Well I ran through Ep. 2 in one sitting just now... that was probably the best told story within a game I've ever seen. The ending touched me far more than any video game I've ever played. I can't wait for episode 3.

Also, UAC prompts appear on a secure desktop. Ordinarily any application running on your computer can manipulate your mouse cursor position and provide input, as well as hooking any window. Disabling UAC retarded is wholesale, but tweaking it to remove the secure desktop is even more retarded because it makes UAC completely useless.

I don't care how advanced a computer user you think you are. Disabling UAC is dumb.

Something like that happened with Audiosurf. I was all "let's see what this fuss is abouOOOH STEAM YOU PIECE OF CRAP I HATE YOU AND NEVER WANT TO oh I just have to restart."

trust me the field modifications that could be done to a 9K series were beyond anything ever done with the 10K series (thanks to the safety locks built into the 10K series computer assisted targeting system any unauthorized modifications cause the weapon to be disabled)

Episode 3? What?

I think you mean Half-Life 3

Weren't there supposed to be 3 episodes for HL2? I'm pretty sure there are.

Yeah, but you should be waiting for Half-Life 3 instead

Another episode would be :| since they are so short.

Yes, One more episode then valve says this plot line is done.
It'll be Freemans final episode. Since the episodes are basicly Half Life 3.

I hope they do Shepard again, they said they might.

Except for the part where processes aren't run with administrative privileges...I agree it's much less secure but I don't really care.

I don't get to play often but I'm still working through episode 1 so valve can take there time on ep 3

Episode one+two is only like ten hours.
I beat Episode one in a single sitting when i got it, best 5 hours EVER.

I'm still working through HL2. Granted, I just got the Orange Box a month ago.

It's ANNOYING. I never needed it in XP. I only leave it on at all in Vista because I think the idea isn't that bad, but I turned off secure desktop because it's so slow as to be annoying (the time between the secure desktop popping up and the dialog opening can be 5-10 seconds, which isn't uncommon due to Vista's speed to begin with) and it always pops open when I'm trying to type something, completely ruining my train of thought.

I understand that tweaking UAC that way can make it useless, but that assumes I even need it at all. I have used XP for quite a while now without problem... UAC is for people who think it's a good idea to run e-mail attachments. Actually it's not even for them, since they probably click through plenty of warning dialogs already, what's one more?

TLDR summary: UAC secure desktop wouldn't be annoying if Vista wasn't so slow. People are dumb and UAC isn't going to change that. The end.



Here's what I know... three episodes for HL2, then HL3 will be made on the Source engine.

I don't think they consider anything Gearbox made canon... I wouldn't expect Valve to make an OP4 sequel. Not that I don't want one... hmm, what is Gearbox up to these days, anyways?



When HL2 came out I beat it in 11 gameplay hours interspersed with 4 hours of meals, breaks, and a little work. Finished it by 11pm the day it came out. My roommate couldn't comprehend the game I'd been so hyped over was already completed. Of course it was on Easy... I went back later and did Hard.

zuh wah? They're practically instant for me.

Well, you probably have a "NEW" computer. D:

Sometimes the thing takes some time, but thats only when im running stuff and trying to install something. Vista is a great operating system, hell once i figured out what was hogging my GPU speed (Some Anti Aliasing option) i now get better perfomance then XP, and it looks nice.

Well I use my OS to "run stuff" all the time so... it kinda gets annoying.

I find it hard to believe you get better performance than XP, unless you had the anti-aliasing options cranked up in XP, then it's not a fair comparison. I'm 99% certain it's fairly established that if your rig runs games in Vista fast, they'll run faster in XP.

Vista is faster in some respects and slower in others for me. Overall it's snappier and usability is greater as a result.