Cleaning up Windows

Submitted by Rob on Thu, 05/06/2004 - 03:16

Here are some quick pointers on cleaning up that spyware and other junk running on your computer that you really didn't ask for. Try running Spybot Search & Destroy to find all those nasty little pieces of spyware that are wasting your computer resources to track your surfing for somebody else's business. Another popular tool that's a little more user-friendly but a little less aggressive (in my opinion) is LavaSoft AdAware. Both of these can be used for free by an individual, but Spybot accepts donations and AdAware has both a free and a paid version.

Once you've rid yourself of those, you can look at the tasks you still have running by pressing ctrl-alt-delete. This will show you all the processes that are running on your coputer. There's a list maintained at Answers that Work. This list will help you figure out what processes are running, and if you want them running.

‹ antivirus problem

path for processes

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 05/07/2004 - 11:27.

I went to the website Answers That Work and I checked my task manager against the list. It doesn't look like I have any viruses. But there were two processes that could be a virus: winlogon.exe and Iexplore.exe. On the list, it says the path is what will tell you if it is a virus or part of your system. How can I find out from task manager what the path is for these processes? :?:

Cleaning up Windows

Submitted by Rob on Fri, 05/07/2004 - 14:59.

If I saw those two processes, I wouldn't suspect anything. If they're infected, then a virus scanner should see it when they're running. That's the same as for any infected file. Saying they could be a virus is the same as saying that excel.exe could be a virus. It's true, but the only way to tell is to track down the executable and run a virus scanner on it.

If you want to look it up still, task manager on its own can't tell you what the path is for the processes. You can do a search for files with that name, though. If you see any that aren't in your windows folder or a subdirectory, then you would focus on those. The only other catch is that the process name isn't always the same as the name of the file on disk. Then there's no search tool that comes with Windows that will find it.