Not sure whether anybody has previously posted this link.
Handy tips for resolving probs with ns and helpful guides for playin.
http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/
It appears that the shortcut from Desktop created from ns install is buggy
and need to run ns from custom game with in Half life.
or use this fix
If you look in the properties for the NS desktop shortcut, there's a field called "Start in" (or something like that, I'm using swedish Win, so not sure of english names). This field is empty, and that's the whole problem. What should be there, is the path to the hl.exe file. So do this:
In the field above it, called "Name", there's something similar to this: C:\Games\Half-Life\hl.exe -console -noipx -game ns
Now copy the part up to (but no including) "\hl.exe" (in this case: "C:\Games\Half-Life") and paste it into the "Start in" field. Click OK and you're all set!