What is WINDOWS\PCHEALTH\HELPCTR\DataColl?

[Tom T.]

My personal firewall flagged an outgoing request to allow
access for abetterinternet.com, 66.216.73.160, using
Belt.exe, which is apparently a data collection tool
located in WINDOWS\PCHEALTH\HELPCTR\DataColl and involves
a large file containing e.g., CollectedData_12345. Does
anyone know about this program? Is it legit? Thanks.
JTT

 

[Phil \(a.k.a. purplehaz\)]

You've got spyware, adware, a trojan, a search engine hijacker, or a home
page hijacker.

Run these tools weekly
spybot -- http://www.safer-networking.org/
ad-aware -- http://www.lavasoftusa.com/
HiJackThis - http://mjc1.com/mirror/hjt/

 

[Menno Hershberger]

My personal firewall flagged an outgoing request to allow
access for abetterinternet.com, 66.216.73.160, using
Belt.exe, which is apparently a data collection tool
located in WINDOWS\PCHEALTH\HELPCTR\DataColl and involves
a large file containing e.g., CollectedData_12345. Does
anyone know about this program? Is it legit? Thanks.

Well, abetterinternet is a bad thing, but someone has already informed
you of that. Out of curiosity, I went to see if I had such a directory
(folder) and I do, chock full of stuff. All full of "xml" files. I
clicked on one of them and it came up in IE. It looked like HTML language
source, but I could pick out bits and pieces about what booted up the
last time I started my computer. Just that one folder had 206 files in it
that took up 3.98 Mb of space. So, I'm with your subject line, just what
IS all that stuff and why is it necessary to keep all those files? Hell,
my first hard drive was 20 Mb and I never figured I'd ever be able to
fill it. That junk alone would have taken up a fifth of it. Of course
nowadays a scanned picture will take up that much...