illegal aliens

[paulselhi]

everynow and then it's a good idea to check out your system for those little nasties that have sneaked in over time

have a look at your running programs ctrl-alt-del in win 98 and right click the task bar in win NT win 2000, are there any unwelcome guests?

also take at look at the loaded modules, these don't usually show up as running programs, try msinfo32 here's the path on my w98 box:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\MSINFO\MSINFO32.EXE

this gives you a full system report, have a look in 16 and 32 bit modules loaded, you will probably see a load of microsoft ones there theses are ok (well i presume some baddies could masquerade as MS but will not go into that !!!) and you will probably see your antivirus and your firewall

but often you will see unknown dll's these probably snuck in while you were surfing some obsure page and are usally spyware though they could be worse, if you find an unusual one just enter it's name in your browser search box and you will get some good info on it and possible ways to remove it

her's a good site on spyware and other parasites (http://www.cexx.org/adware.htm)

[(jj)]

Just be a wise bunny and be verry verry careful of what you remove.

Follow the rule of "if you feel uncomfortable removing things, then get professional help first" Tis usually cheaper to seek help before things get messed up.


Just my "For What It's Worth"

[paulselhi]

the things to watch out for are those that are not asscociated with a known program i.e one you are happy having on board

if you see a dll that looks odd then do a search for it on the net you will usually see what it is and if it is considered spyware or a parasite

when removing these things they are quite tenacious little buggers and you may have to edit your registry, quite often you have a catch 22 as you cannot kill the baddies because they are actively running and so you have to remove the key for them in the registry then reboot and kill them whilst they sleep

if you do make sure you have a backup of your registry, in fact a backup of everything, as well as up to date emergency repair disks

if in doubt give us a shout and i will try to find out what you have, if it's bad or not