I think I figured out the problem with steam on my computer, and its probably the same for most other people. I followed the instructions on www.firearmsmod.com and copied firearms and IFC22.dll to my firearms folder in steam/steamapps/*email address*/half-life, but when I tried to go into games, the screen would go black like it was loading something, then it would exit back to the desktop with nothing changed. However, when I go into the firearms folder in steam and delete the folder "cl_dlls" and then try and load up a game, I see the firearms background and a game beginning to load up, and then an error message saying my client_dll doesn't match the server's. This file seems to be the source of my problems, since I can't load a game with or without it. Hopefully someone can help me out with this.

when it says client_dll doesn't match server's...are you making sure that ur not trying to join a 2.7 server and not a 2.8 server? (if you have 2.8 installed of course)I know I was trying to join a server but it said my dlls and my ps_river didn't match server's but then I discovered it was a 2.7 serverfind a server with 2.8 in its name and try it