But this is something, what's strange to me. Since I tried that Portal and HL2 yesterday. And I don't see, how it can work for me, but not for you.

I really just took my fully updated HL2 build from Steam folder on my main PC, copy it to XP machine and then loaded with shortcut and correct switch. And off it goes. Did you tried it that way?

Srandista wrote on 2020-04-09, 06:07:

But this is something, what's strange to me. Since I tried that Portal and HL2 yesterday. And I don't see, how it can work for me, but not for you.

I really just took my fully updated HL2 build from Steam folder on my main PC, copy it to XP machine and then loaded with shortcut and correct switch. And off it goes. Did you tried it that way?

My install of XP is weird, the main partition is labelled E: because when installing I didn’t know it would recognise a Zip drive as a useable storage space. This causes a lot of issues with some games, but I’m not entirely sure if this applies with Half Life 2. In this scenario I downloaded it straight from windows 7 to the XP drive since they’re both in the same PC, I’m pretty sure there is no difference in files between them. I’ve owned HL2 since 2018, and unless Valve put some weirdness in the files in the last couple of years that linked it to Steam and its install, I’m not sure what could be different. The only way I’ve gotten it to work is with the modified HL2 root folder files and it’s redirected steam folder in its ‘bin’ directory, but since the expansions didn’t work with the modified HL2 bin, I swapped it out for bin from steam copy’s instead, but at the same time retaining the redirected steam folder in its directory.

I know what you mean , we all know Half life 2 vanilla works just fine on xp , Its the Lost Coast episode that does not contain a standalone executable when you move it to another computer , I too would like to get Lost Cost working on windows xp

The last build I have backed up is steampipe build v5377866 which includes HL2+EP1+EP2+Source+Lost Coast and was tested on XP 32bit on 9-27-2020

Use hl2.exe -game lostcoast to launch.

i have halflife 2 -lost coast and episode 1 running on XP via batch file sets , pc gaming wiki list the drm free half life games and expansions all you do is set a batch file for the game files you have in the base half life 2 folder like for lost coast you set a text document hl2.exe - game lostcoast and save it as lostcoast.bat

this is my no steam involved method , im tired of these platforms dropping support for older operating systems that they use to work just fine on .

Hi all. I've recently been attempting to get Half Life 2 running on my freshly installed XP machine and had.. trouble. I can freely copy my Half Life 2 folder off my Win 10 machine onto another Win 10 machine and play it, but on trying the same on a fresh legit XP install - nothing happens.. I guess copying over to XP no longer works? I had some back and forth with Phil from PhilsComputerLab about it to see what he'd done, but it sounds as though he just copied the folder over and it worked for him!

Well after having tried copying over several times I looked elsewhere. I bought the Collectors Edition from eBay and tried that - but got stuck with a Steam requirement issue. So instead I got the version down from the REMOVED. That works fine - but I still wasn't happy, as I wanted an up to date version with fixes etc.

Grasping at straws I googled 'half life 2 latest version download' and the first link (the website is REMOVED something) was very Russian, but I gave it a go. There was an installer, and then it downloaded and extracted out what seems to be the latest build with all episodic content as well! I copied it over to usb, then over to my XP machine and tried it. It works!

I then set my shortcuts up as per page 1 with -game lostcoast, -game hl1, -game episodic

I virus/malware checked it the whole time through and had nothing flagged. I'd prefer something more legitimate, but this seems to be the best way I found! Anyway, just thought i'd chip in to the discussion 😀

Around the end of 2019 the HL2 engine games broke XP support. The last build I have is v5377866 which works fine on XP.
You can download a previous build through Steam that will work on XP but IIRC it will be build v2257546 but really not much has changed with HL2.

HL2 isn't so called "abandonware" so deleted the names of the places you got it from your post.

DosFreak wrote on 2022-06-12, 18:05:

Around the end of 2019 the HL2 engine games broke XP support. The last build I have is v5377866 which works fine on XP.
You can download a previous build through Steam that will work on XP but IIRC it will be build v2257546 but really not much has changed with HL2.

HL2 isn't so called "abandonware" so deleted the names of the places you got it from your post.

Thanks! good to know! Apologies for the faux pas on the links too.