running processes

[Lindsay]

A curious thing happened today on my mums pc. I was giving it the once over
just to check it's health generally (viruses, etc), when I opened Task
Manager and discovered 2 processes called IEXPLORE.EXE. Thing is, only 1
Internet Explorer window was open and there was no popups or download
windows etc. Just the 1 window. One of the processes was over 1Mb in size
but the other was only 24Kb. A search of the hard drive showed only the one
file in that name, so I guess it must be Internet Explorer. My question is:
why would it be so small in size. Even the executable file is bigger than
that. The computer has also been scanned for viruses and found none.

 

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

Sounds like a virus or spyware to me. You should only have one iexplore.exe
open when internet explorer is open and it should be using like 13-14mb at
least. Do virus scan with a current and updated anti-virus program, nothing
older than 2002 and do spyware scans as well.
Run these tools weekly
spybot -- http://www.safer-networking.org/
ad-aware -- http://www.lavasoftusa.com/

 

[Lindsay]

I thought the same thing but the AV (defintitions up to date) and AdAware
(latest version) came up blank. Using search, I only found one instance of a
file called IEXPLORE.EXE (checked hidden and system files).

 

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

Try:
start, run, type in: sfc /scannow, hit enter.
Have xp cd handy.

 

[Steve Nielsen]

Use Spybot Search and Destroy, too. It catches some villians Ad-aware
misses and vice-versa. Also make sure to update both Ad-aware and Spybot
S&D before scanning. Even if it's the latest versions there are still
new updates.

Steve