Games Not Launching.

On occassion I've run into the problem with games just not launching, they'll pull up a named window and do nothing beyond that.

The latest problem I've had with this is Mirror's Edge (Downloaded from steam). In the past its been a couple games I can't remember the names of.. one being some dinky mmo named crimecraft I grabbed a trial of while bored.

My question is could there be somekind of update or something of the sort I'm missing that could be doing this? I'm well above the system requirements, and I run most games without problem. (Call of duty MF2, dawn of war 2, Team fortress 2, Killing floor, WoW, Red Faction Guerrilla... Just a small faction of the crap I play and have no troubles with.)

Yes i have had many issues with steam, its mainly because it uses allot of ur card and processor if you have allot of items in the background it can take a long time. Garys mod for me takes like 5 min to boot up and my processor and card is top of the line. Some issues can show that its tryint to boot but it will not start Proccessers are above 80% in loading. random lag after launching. last Steams programing just sucks not all games run great on they way they launch the game. best idea is to turn stuff off in ur background and keep trying. I have this problem with all their games.