Suspicious Registry Entry

[Guest]

Found this suspicious registry entry while trying to wipe out some spyware:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ `=3(.,

This is the suspicious part `=3(.,

Looks like an emoticon. Web search engines don't come with anything for
`=3(., because all the characters except for the 3 are overlooked.

Anyone seen anything like this?

 

[Bill Sanderson]

Ignore it, I think.

As I recall--thinking back to a beta, the consensus was that this entry
somehow relates to either region encoding for media player or a dvd drive,
or some other encryption/copy protection mechanism related to media.

It isn't sinister (except to the extent that such mechanisms are....)--and I
don't think it is identical on all machines.

 

[Ron Chamberlin]

I'll stand by with Bill. I've seen it, scratched my head, and no problem
with ignoring it here.

Ron Chamberlin
MS-MVP