Administrator Account Renamed, Media Player, IMAPI

[Tom Rogers]

For the past week or so my Administrator account has been
periodically renamed, and I have no idea why. Also,
Windows Media Player is behaving oddly, and IMAPI is
running but I can't account for it.

I log in as local machine\Administrator, and start
working. I've got Windows Media Player running (but
minimized to toolbar status). 15 minutes to an hour later
I noticed that music is still playing, but Stop, Play,
Prev/Next are disabled on the Media Player toolbar. I can
use the Quick Access button to load a playlist or album,
but it seems as though two instances of Media Player are
running. If I restore Media Player, the toolbar version
stops playing. If I then select some music and minimize
Media Player, the toolbar version's buttons are again
disabled.

So I get sick of it, shut everything down and log off
(also, IMAPI.exe is running, but none of the software
running requires it). When I enter my credentials I'm
denied access. After logging in using a backup account (I
realize Administrator ought to be the backup, but I'm
choosing to ignore that for now), I check my Users panel,
only to discover that the account formerly
named "Administrator" is now called "9E1amen0". Which is
really weird.

Why is my Administrator account being renamed (to what
appears to be the output of some form of encryption, or
garbage)?

How and why is a single process of Windows Media Player 9
splitting into two almost independent processes that
interact in annoying ways?

I'm running Windows XP Pro SP 1 on a Dell laptop. The
software I regularly use is IE 6.0.2800.etc, Macromedia
ColdFusion Studio 4.5.1, and Windows Media Player 9. All
current patches and updates have been installed, and
while none of my software has changed in the past 6
months (with the exception of updates), this problem has
only begun to occur in the past week.

 

[Guest]

The IMAPI.exe could be the Image-Mastering-API which is related to DVD burning software or will sometime load if you insert a blank DVD into your cd/dvd drive.
I have never seen and Admin account rename itself. I am going to ask the obvious here. Does anyone else have access to your laptop? Are you using blank passwords? Are you running a reliable AV soultion? Install Spybot and check for spyware. If you have system restore enabled go back before the problems started and run the system restore feature. Make sure you are free of virus/worms and spyware.