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Thread ID: 37211	2003-08-31 21:26:00	XP problem?	Otago_Jas (4444)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
172053	2003-08-31 21:26:00	Hi My sister-in-law has an interesting thing happening on her PC. She is running XP Home on a Celeron 1.21GHz, 256MB ram. It only has a 20GB hard disc, and that is 93% full!!! One problem she is having is something is taking a snapshot of the desktop every 5 minutes when the computer is running and saving the file into C:\Windows\System32\Data. Try as I might I don't know how to stop this as I don't know the app/whatever doing this. Has anybody else ever had this problem, and if so - how do I fix it? Is it a virus/spyware? Cheers Jas	Otago_Jas (4444)
172054	2003-08-31 22:01:00	Sounds weird, I would do a complete antivirus search , (making sure the antivirus is uptodate) and run a firewall. Running a PC without either of these is deadly on the net today. Also might want to try a windowsupdate through www.windowsupdate.com	Hawk (4365)
172055	2003-08-31 22:20:00	Sounds like there's a keylogger type of application running. I agree that an anti-virus and spyware scan should be your first step. Then Check what apps are loading on startup... go Start, Run, type in MSCONFIG, OK, click on the Startup tab, and see if there's any unwanted items automatically running each time you boot. Unchecking an item should disable it (this process is easily reversible)	Greg S (201)
172056	2003-08-31 22:51:00	...jas Before you play around with msconfig in XP have a look here...... www.blackviper.com where the author recommends using run:services.msc.	Scouse (83)
172057	2003-09-01 01:49:00	mannnnnn, 20 gigs, 93% full, there must be bucket loads of crap on that computer. Somethings definately hogging that space. I agree with Scouse since the os is win xp, running services.msc is the better option than msconfig as it's a lot less likely to screw with the system settings. These days it's difficult to decide what xp needs to run in the startup. Win 98 was piss ezy to decifer...	dotcommander (4338)
172058	2003-09-01 02:55:00	Goto Start==> Run and type in C:\windows\CSC See how big that directory is. If it is big, delete it all. It is safe to delete	Crazkilla (4482)
172059	2003-09-01 03:46:00	How old is this computer? Is it second hand or bought from those company auctions where they sell their old Office comps for very low prices?Ur situation sounds kinda dodgy, i would guess that there was some sort of spyware on ur Comp, get spybot search and destroy and scan ur comp to see if there is spyware running. My guess is, if the comp was second hand the people must have placed spyware to monitor their children/spouse/employees...etc. If it aint secnd hand, then if u could try and reformat the comp, everyting should be fine afta that.	vk_dre (195)
172060	2003-09-01 04:02:00	There's absolutely nothing wrong with disabling auto-start apps in the msconfig startup. Black Viper's emphasis is on not altering any services from msconfig	Greg S (201)
172061	2003-09-01 05:17:00	Usually its very difficult to find a keystroke logger if it is running on your computer - its usually hidden from the services tab etc and startup. I *think* theres a program called Advanced Hack 2.0+ that shows up every running thread/process running. To be really sure to get rid of it. Zero wipe the hard drive with killdisk and reinstall the OS. Format might not do the job as you can get hidden partitions :)	PoWa (203)
172062	2003-09-01 10:42:00	Thanks for the replies people. The PC was bought brand new around a year ago. Norton Antivirus is running full-time and all updates are their :) Decided a clean install would probably do the job myself, so will do this probably this coming weekend. I have run AdAware & Spybot through this computer for them in the past and it took hours to scan the 20GB hard disc!!!! Just another point - they have a 13 year old son who likes to download game demos apparently. I think someone has snuck something (probably many things) past him :)	Otago_Jas (4444)
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