It's TeaTimer. And it is not essential.
From Spybot-S&D HELP...
[[ResidentTeaTimer Tools
What is the Resident TeaTimer?
The Resident TeaTimer is a new tool of Spybot-S&D which perpetually monitors
the processes called/initiated. It immediately detects known malicious
processes wanting to start and terminates them giving you some options how
to deal with this process in the future: You can set TeaTimer to:
- be informed, when the process tries to start again
- automatically kill the process
- or generally allow the process to run There is also an option to delete
the file associated with this process.
In addition, TeaTimer detects, when something wants to change some critical
registry keys. TeaTimer can protect you against such changes again giving
you an option: You can either "Allow" or "Deny" the change. As TeaTimer is
always running in the background, it takes some resources of about 5 MB.
Why does Resident TeaTimer terminate the application before asking?
Because threats like toll dialers are time critical - they cost from the
first second they've connected. In order to protect you, these have to be
terminated at the moment they appear before they can connect at all.
Why is the TeaTimer called "TeaTimer"?
As we used to forget our tea, when we let it brew, we built a small tool
with a system tray icon to remind us. We called this tool "TeaTimer". When
we started to develop the Resident tool for Spybot-S&D, we also needed a
system tray icon for this. As we do not like having too many icons in the
system tray, we decided to put both tools together and kept the name
"TeaTimer". The next version of the Resident tool will also have the
functions of the original "TeaTimer".
You can find the Resident TeaTimer in the tools section. ]]
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Hope this helps. Let us know.
Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User
In