Help, HL2 not starting up/errors (x3100)

Basically, I downloaded HL2EP2 off Steam and tried running it. The first few times it got to the menu, but it was very laggy (think <1fps). So I tried running it in DX7 mode, after which it refuses to start up at all, giving me an Engine Error: "Your graphics hardware must support at least pixel shader 1.1 to run this game!" I understand that x3100 isn't a gaming card and all that, but in all seriousness, there were many posts by people who were running it at 1024x768 medium without a problem. It seems like the problem is with HL2, since other dx9 intensive games seem to run fine (Mythos for example).
My config is as follows:
Vostro 1400 running XP Pro
T5470 C2D 1.6Ghz
Intel 965 Mobile Chipset
X3100 running latest 14.33.1 drivers (or so I hope, since this looks terribly like a driver issue)
2Gb 667Mhz DDR2

 

Can you find anything on line about how to manually switch it back up to DX9 mode? I'd recommend trying that, then going in to video settings and dropping everything to low. From there, you can raise things up until the framrate becomes unacceptable. Keep in mind that even the main menu is actually real time rendering a full animated scene, so the menu will chug if your settings are too high.

 

HL2EP2 was laggy to me too. You have to add this in the launch options:

Code:

-dxlevel 81 -console

Starting up with console solve it. The whole problem is the animated background. When starting the game with the console, the background image is not shown, therefore - no problems.

Edit: You should enable the console first. Options->Keyboard->Advanced->Enable the developer console

You cannot run HL2EP2 in DirectX 7 mode. Should be at least 8.0/8.1

 

Thanks, that solved it.