Mystery Application

[Jeff Barnett]

I'm running SP2 with welcome screen and simple file sharing. The
administrator account shows on the welcome screen. I log it in after
boot up then switch to a limited user account where I do most of my
work. I notice that the admin account shows "1 program running" on the
welcome screen. When I switch to that account, there is nothing on the
task bar (right or left side) and the task manager shows no
applications. I have also run Spybot Search & Destroy to see if can find
anything -- other than a few tracking cookies everything seems clean.
The only heavy duty drivers in the system are for my ATI Readeon video
card. Any clues as to what might be going on?

-- Jeff Barnett

 

[CreateWindow]

Hi Jeff,

Log on as admin, click Start / Run then enter msconfig / click ok

Untick everything in the "Startup" (tab) - see if one of those is the
culprit. If so which one is it?

CreateWindow
http://mymessagetaker.com

 

[Rock]

I'm running SP2 with welcome screen and simple file sharing. The
administrator account shows on the welcome screen. I log it in after boot
up then switch to a limited user account where I do most of my work. I
notice that the admin account shows "1 program running" on the welcome
screen. When I switch to that account, there is nothing on the task bar
(right or left side) and the task manager shows no applications. I have
also run Spybot Search & Destroy to see if can find anything -- other than
a few tracking cookies everything seems clean. The only heavy duty drivers
in the system are for my ATI Readeon video card. Any clues as to what
might be going on?

Do you mean the built in Administrator account is displaying on the Welcome
Screen. Unless you changed a setting to enable this, that fact indicates
there are no other accounts with admin privileges, which is not a good idea.
Good practices are to set a strong password on the built in Administrator
account, and then not use it. Only use that account if something were to
damage the working admin account. Otherwise if something damages _the_
Administrator account and there are no other administrator level accounts on
the system there could be access and configuration problems.

If there are no other admin level accounts create at least one, and login to
it at least once. Then copy the data and settings from _the_ Administrator
account to the new account.

HOW TO Create and Configure User Accounts in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=279783

How to Copy a User Profile
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/win_xp_logon.htm

Note: once another admin level account is created _the_ Administrator
account will disappear from the Welcome Screen. To login to that account,
for XP Pro at the Welcome Screen do ctrl-alt-del twice to bring up the
Classic login dialog box, enter Administrator as the username and the
password. For XP Home you need to start the computer in Safe Mode to see
the Administrator account on the Welcome Screen.

Since you said simple file sharing is enabled I am guessing this is XP Pro
since for XP Home simple file sharing is the only way.

 

[Jeff Barnett]

Thank you for responding. I turned off everything I could identify as
nonessential and a few things that were. I couldn't find the culprit
this way. I consulted Google to determine what some of the programs were
to guide my decisions. Any more suggestions?

-- Jeff Barnett