"HL2.exe has stopped working and will be closed" every time you exit TF2
and Portal? Me too, and I'm tired of it. So first let me address a few
comments that I know will be made...

1. This started when Valve converted Steam for a typical foreground
application and had it run as a service. I think we all agree this is a
good thing, I'm very happy with Steam as a service, but the root of the
issue is that it runs under the Local Service account and it isn't set
up correctly so UAC chokes when certain parts of Steam do their thing
and then try to exit. It seems to only happen with Source engine based
games versus third party titles, and we all know how closely Steam and
the Source engine are tied together.

2. Yes, I know it doesn't appear to hurt anything and you just have to
click a button, but that isn't the point. We also don't want to waste
time with having to validate our installs or deal with potentional
corrupted files, and none of us know what side effects this continuous
crashing causes.

3. This also wreaks havoc with your Reliability & Performance Monitor
score, and when I'm troubleshooting I would rather use that tool to help
me identify and real error, not wade through results I know are bogus.

4. I opened a ticket with Valve and got back the horrid suggestion to
add the Local Service account to Local Admins. Worst idea ever, take a
look at your Services and you will more than half of them use that
account. One of the many smart things that was done late in the Windows
2000 life cycle was to remove service accounts from that group by
default, this is not something to take lightly and you shouldn't do it,
and Valve should not recomend it. Note all those other services I
mentioned don't have to be forcably closed all the time, this is a
configuration issue that should be addressed.

5. There is some evidence that this isn't just a Vista issue, but it is
happening to more people since XP SP3 shipped.

6. Yes, I am just this anal retentive about my logs and reliability
scores.

So with that out of the way I implore anyone who suffers from this
error to please take 10 minutes and open a ticket with Steam support;
the more tickets raised the faster Valve will address this. And
squashing this kind of bug does not mean that your favorite new feature
will be neglected, that is not how large software dev houses work.

'_Please_use_this_link__'
(https://support.steampowered.com/index.php)to find the support page log
in.

And if you are even more lazy than I usually am, you can re-use my
text...

The HL2.exe error has stopped error occurs on every exit ot Team
Fortress 2 and Portal. Your Windows Vista Troubleshooting guide is out
of date and all the "fixes" you recomend are incorporated into Vista
SP1. Does Valve intend to officially investigate and resolve this issue?
Even though it doens't prevent the games from being played a crash of
any sort is never desirable. Thanks.

Thanks for humoring my OCD and need for spiffy clean Event Viewer logs.


--
bob_c_b

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