Johan Malmberg of Uniblue Systems, makers of Windows system utility WinTasks, tells me they’ve launched a new site, www.processlibrary.com, which is “a free service site that provides the user with detailed information about every common process. In the recesses of most computers, 20-30 invisible processes run silently in the background. To know what every process is doing is the best way to ensure that the system is clean from adwares, spyware, viruses, trojans and other unwanted processes.” Processes, by the way, are programs but may not be visible unless you look under the hood of what is going on. They could be a print spooler or some other system widget.
The website is a good place to start if you think there’s something weird going on in your computer and you’re not sure what it is. If you’re using XP or Windows 2000, hit Ctrl-Alt-Del, then the Task Manager button, the Processes tab, and take a look at the list of processes, or ‘Images’, in the column. There will be quite a few odd-sounding names, but if anything jumps out at you — or is sucking up lots of memory (‘Mem Usage’) or chip power (‘CPU’) then jot down its name and enter it into the search field in the ProcessLibrary.
If it comes back and tells you have a nasty on your computer then you should set about removing it.