All of a sudden got the urge to play the original HL1. Installed on Win XP. When I selected new game the message 'please insert Half Life CD' comes up 3 times then followed by 'cannot validate Half Life'.
No-CD & No-DVD Patch troubleshooting: The most common problem getting a No-CD/No-DVD patch to work is ensuring that the No-CD/No-DVD patch matches you're game version, because the games exe is changed when a patch update is applied previous versions won't work.
If its an older game you are playing and you are running Windows 7 or Windows 8 it may not work, if you right click the .exe file and choose Properties and then Compatibility you can change this to run in Windows 98/ Windows 2000 etc. You can find more information on the Beginners Help page here