This tutorial will teach you how you can use a free program called "hldsupdatetool," developed by Valve, to run and host your very own Counter-Strike: Source server. This tutorial is for Windows operating systems only.

The first step is only required if your PC (from which you will be hosting the server) is behind a router. You will need to forward the port 27015. If your PC is behind a router and you don't know how to forward the port, you may follow this tutorial for more insight or do some research. The tutorial: How to forward a port on a Linksys router.

Next, download and install hldsupdatetool by clicking here. For convenience and ease of access, install into the directory: "C:\HLServer".

Now that the program is installed, open up a command prompt by typing "cmd" inside a Run window. To get a run window in Windows XP or previous versions of Windows, click on the Start menu and the Run button should be right there.

In Vista and newer versions of Windows, you can type cmd or run into the search bar (available by clicking the Start menu).

Now that you have a command prompt opened, type "cd C:\HLServer" (without quotes), press enter, and then type "hldsupdatetool.exe -command update -game cstrike -dir ." (without quotes). This will update all of the files necessary to run your server, the process can take 30 minutes to several hours.

After everything is done updating, you will need to create a server.cfg file. Navigate to the directory "C:\HLServer\cstrike\cfg". In this directory, create (or paste a pre-existing) a server.cfg file. Any commands not specified in the cfg file will be given default values. Important things to set are hostname, sv_password (if you want a password), and rcon_password (to remotely give the server commands). After that, open up a Run box and type "C:\HLServer\srcds.exe -console -game cstrike -port 27015 -autoupdate +maxplayers 12 +map cs_militia" (without quotes). This is just an example, you may choose any values you want - for example: +map cs_militia could be any map, and -maxplayers 12 could be any number. Press enter. Give it a few seconds, and your server should be up and running.

To test it out, go to www.ipchicken.com to see what your IP address is. Then, open up CSS and try connecting to that IP. If it works, then your server is up and running.

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