Just recently when I go to start up NS, I will get the opening background, and the music, but I will not get the options list that allows me to connect to servers, check friends, etc. Ive tried reinstalling items, and getting my backed up version of steam to try and fix this...To no avail.

Comp Specs are:

Athlon 1800+ XP
AC 97 Sound card
GeForce 2 MX400
256 DDR Ram
Windows XP
Running in OpenGL At 800 x 600
Using retail HL
3.0 beta 3 on steam.

Note: This only happens with NS.

When you say you reinstalled items, what where they?

Have you tried deleting the clientregistry.blob in Steam file?

Any other programs running in the background?

Were you able to play b-4 and just now you can't, or have you never been able to play?

If you use Cheating Death and have a firewall in "sharp" mode (like zone alarm), then give CD server abilitys (faced it self).