hl2.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close.

I've been trying to fix this for the past day or two. The story goes that 2 nights ago at around 2:30am a get a popup asking to allow a process (C:\WINDOWS\system32\userinit.exe,C:\WINDOWS\system32\twext.exe), it being late, I clicked allow and went on with watching my movie. The next morning I try to run Team Fortress 2 and instead of loading the game it comes up with the 'hl2.exe has envountered a problem and needs to close'.

I tried googling around a bit and so far I've uninstalled TF2 and reinstalled it (no luck with this, the error seems to be universal with all steam games running the source engine), I've tried downgrading my video card drivers, and well those were about the only 2 feasible options I could find.

Then i remembered the popup which i got early in the morning and recovered it from the log and googled that and found that twext was apparently a trojan and I have no idea what the other part of the string is. I'm currently going through the windows XP cleaning procedure and I've looked at the twext.exe threads and tried to fix it with HJT, but I still get the hl2.exe error.

Oh and, hello I'm Hobojangles

 

Sorry guys, problem fixed. I followed the windows xp clean read me thing and all is well.

Thank you so much!

Feel free to delete this thread.

 

hello what did u do to fix it cause i been trying for a month or so now

 

Have you seen this thread?

 

no i have not thank you for the link

 

Good luck! Let us know if it works, please. If this happens to others it's good for us to know how to fix it.

 

Friend of mine just got this one. Don't ever click on random popups - ever.
This appears to be some kind of Trojan. Now maybe he'll upgrade to Windows 7 like I been asking.

 

If you suspect a Trojan, go to this thread and follow the guide to the letter. Give the malware fighters a couple of days to get back to you, they're all volunteers. But they are exceptionally good.