GoldSrc Game Crash: HL has caused an error in GAMEUI.DLL

If restarting your computer doesn't clear this problem, then there are several possible causes that you can look into.

The most likely cause of this problem is either a bad gameui.dll or an incompatibility with your current video driver.

You can try renaming your game folder temporarily and let Steam create a totally default installation, do this by exiting from Steam, then go to (using the example from above):

C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\<account>\counter-strike\cstrike

and rename the counter-strike folder to this:

C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\<account>\~counter-strike\cstrike

When you start up Steam and then click on Counter-Strike in the games menu, Steam will quickly create a default installation. Then you can try connecting and playing.

If you still have the problem then you might have a bad or incompatible video driver, perhaps even parts of an old video driver is still installed (if you upgraded and didn't properly uninstall the old drivers).

The first thing to try is setting your video to D3D and 800x600 and see if that will get things working. D3D is slower then OpenGL but give this a try and see if things start working again.

If setting your video mode did not fix your problem, then the next thing you'll want to do is download the latest video drivers for your card and install them.

Be sure to follow the driver uninstall and re-install instructions from your card manufacturer.

It is also very important that you have the latest Operating System updates and latest motherboard drivers as well, please check with your motherboard manufacturer and be sure to run Windows update.