drwtsn32.exe, Hammer.exe, Hl2.exe

[nub]

Ah yes, the lovely world of process problems. I've been getting quite a few annoying problems lately. Here's my current 3 problems:


drwtsn32.exe

Currently I have four of these running in the background, and constantly. They're taking up from 2-14 K of memory each. It's not really affecting my system's performance at all...but it seems suspicious. Is this normal? I don't recall ever having to run four of these at the same time before. In fact, I don't remember ever seeing it period. I know it's not a bad process. It's a debugger tool for Windows from what I know.


Hammer.exe

So apparently I exited Hammer Editor some time earlier today, but the process never went away. It's STUCK. I can't do ANYTHING to it in Task Manage. It just won't go the fuck away. Any of you get this? I know a restart will fix this, but I'm just curious if any of you had the same problem.


Hl2.exe

Probably wondering what problem I could possibly have that you haven't had with this. Well, every damn time I exit ANY source game (css, hl2, tf2, l4d), I get an error window about some memory error or something and the program was forced to be terminated. Not the generic "has stopped working" error. The game exits fine and all, but I think the fact that it produces a process error every time is a bad sign. Any ideas?

[Chopium]

1: I've NEVER seen a "drwtson32.exe" before, but I'm a bit suspicious about a program formally named Doctor Watson...

2: I don't get that problem, but WHENEVER I exit Hammer while in full-screen mode, it decides to tell my computer to go into 800x600 resolution and get stuck there. I've tried multiple times to get it back to 1680x1050, but even if I do, my background elements and explorer break down. :/ I just have to restart my computer if that happens.

3: I get that most the time. I don't really mind it.

[Megadude]

Hammer and HL2 I don't know about, but AFAIK drwtsn32.exe is a windows thing that is only supposed to appear when something has crashed, and usually disappears soon afterwards. I found this about it:

Important: Some malware camouflage themselves as drwtsn32.exe, particularly if they are located in c:\windows or c:\windows\system32 folder. Thus check the drwtsn32.exe process on your pc whether it is pest.

Having 4 running at once makes me think that at least 1 of them is bad, especially since I have never seen more than 1 running at once.

[davidc538]

sounds to me like a nasty virus disguising itself

[dissonance]

drwtsn32.exe

I remember this from Windows 98. Seemed benign.

[Ataraxia]

Drwtsn32.exe is part of windows crash handling, as far as I remember. Usually appears after a process has crapped out, but most of the time in my experience, the Doc also crashes. Might be why theres 4 of them there. I usually stop them through task manager.

[Ryder2394]

Well what does the actual Doctor Watson do? It's sort of like an inspection program to figure out why stuff crashes, aids the Microsoft error reporting system, etc.

[nub]

It's supposed to be a debugger for programs running on Windows. I think the message that pops up and allows you to view the info about the crash is made from this thing.

I'm going to try and end them in task manager and see what happens. I've scanned with many programs already and they found nothing. I don't think it's a virus, just something quirky going on.


I'll try and peruse the steam forums for some answers about hl2.exe crashing on exit all the time.


EDIT: Well, the source of all my problems was in fact being caused by the 4 drwtsn32.exe processes that were sticking. They were causing the weird crash-on-exit issue with Source games, and I'm fairly sure it caused Hammer.exe to get stuck after Hammer crapped out while I was mapping.

But everything works fine now. Thanks for the help guys.