Ghost program appears and disappears

[Guest]

I have this problem of a blank program that doesn't identify itself which
will appear on the task bar and then 3 to 5 seconds later it would disappear.
It would go in this cycle about every 10-15 mins. I ran the anti virus
program, ran ad aware and spy bot but this "ghost" program still appears. It
is not a big problem until I watch movies or play games which it will disrupt
whatever I am doing. I notice that I am not the only one with this problem.

 

[Steve Shattuck]

I have this problem of a blank program that doesn't identify itself which

will appear on the task bar and then 3 to 5 seconds later it would
disappear.
It would go in this cycle about every 10-15 mins. I ran the anti virus
program, ran ad aware and spy bot but this "ghost" program still appears.
It
is not a big problem until I watch movies or play games which it will
disrupt
whatever I am doing. I notice that I am not the only one with this
problem.

The symptoms are similar to the same problem in Windows 98 where some poorly
written screen savers did the same thing. Other than that, you might want
to leave Task Manager open to the processes page to see if you can see the
name of the program.

 

[R. McCarty]

Go to SysInternals and download Filemon. Install and run. Allow it to
run and log until your event happens. Then click the "File" option and
uncheck Capture. You can now back scroll through the display to find
your file access that tracks with your program.
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Filemon.html