having trouble with something that doesnt seem to be spyware

"The Application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000142). click on OK to terminate application."
this occurs when i try and use the halflife installer.

i cant open event viewer, add/remove programs in control panel. running microsoft XP home edition with SP2. ran every single spyware program listed in your file, none found anything except spybot with a few dso exploits and adaware with a couple of tracking cookies.

 

The above error usually indicates one of the following:

a. The version of the application is not compatible with Windows XP.

b. The user lacks appropriate permissions to access a file or directory required by the application.

 

the reason i had it in spyware is that add/remove programs has vanished completely, and i click the file .cpl that the add/remove programs was supposed to be a shortcut to does absolutely nothing. event view is in the control panel, but it also does nothing. the program worked for MONTHS and i got a little annoyed that my computer took more than 3 minutes to shut down and it stopped working. im reinstalling windows, i've tried downloading video drivers and reinstalling steam, and neither works. i dont think its spyware coz i went through every step you listed and nothing seems to pop up

 

I know this is an old thread, but for anyone with similar problems this is usually caused by a missing .dll file. Which one specifically I have yet to track down, but when I archived "unused" .dll files I had these exact symptoms. When I restored them, they went away.