Monitoring background activity in XP? (getting annoyed now)

[ZfrkS62]

Lately i've been noticing a window opening and rapidly closing in the task bar.
It happens to fast for any description to display in the box and i can't get the cursor down fast enough to catch it. It seems to happen completely at random.

Virus scan doesn't see anything funny and the only thing i can think of to catch it is to see if i can run cmd or something to catch the little bugger in the act of opening and closing.

Anyone have any ideas?

[Jabba]

ctrl-alt-delete/processes

??

[SPEEDCORE]

Virus scanner isnt enough these days. You need to be upto date with XP patches and scan the system on a weekly basis using apps like Adaware and Spybot as well as having a software firewall which provides HIPS protection(host intrusion prevention).

Anyway back to the issue at hand, I use Process Explorer which is from sysinternals(now owned by M$) http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/Processesandthreadsutilities.mspx just have that running in the foreground and wait...

edit: Jabba - Taskmanger is pretty useless haha, the above program provides a vast more amount of information about the process running.

[Jabba]

edit: Jabba - Taskmanger is pretty useless haha, the above program provides a vast more amount of information about the process running.

Always worked for me...I guess I dont look at some of the sites that you do though :mrgreen:

[Mattk]

Task Manager should work fine for normal personal usage. Of course, it's not very detailed, but it works fine for me.

[gigdy]

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/FileAndDisk/Filemon.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/regmon.mspx

those 2 will let you know most everything thats happeneing

[ZfrkS62]

thanks guys. i'll let you know if i find anything.

Speedcore, my computer is pretty up to date and mcafee just upgraded everything, including firewall. There are only 3 or 4 sites that i visit, and none of them are sketchy so whatever this is has to be either firefox, windows or mcafee being stupid.

[blinkmeat]

another reason to buy a Mac?

[ZfrkS62]

ok, i got process monitor which is filemon and regmon combined, but the problem is, there is a big delay on it and i don't know what i am looking for here. It monitors and displays everything to such a fraction of a second that i can't even begin to count the decimal places or hope to figure out what time it occurred :?

[Max Power]

just use the force...

[ZfrkS62]

ok, process mon is useless since it can't narrow down it's scope in a way that i can figure out what is going on, and task manager doesn't show anything when it happens. are there any microsoft pros on here?

and no smart ass replies from you geeks about switching to linux or getting a mac :P

[Max Power]

i don't if this helps

http://www.processlibrary.com/

[dutchmasterflex]

It's most likely some spy/adware junk running in the background..

Have you tried running Spybot or Adaware?