what is this Robot doing running on my computer? (W98)

[trixmix]

A while back, some idiot at our office opened the 'goner' virus, and several others...Our computers are all networked, and when mine started acting funny...I knew right away that I had been infected too...So, no problem, I was able to go to McCaffe, and download fixes-for all the virus's I had...Nimda, Goner, Klez, Elkern, and a couple others...BUT, after all of these were supposedly cleaned and removed from my system...I happened to stumble into Control, Alt, Delete one day-and I noticed that one program listed as 'running' was called-simply-Robot....I can click it & shut the program down, but upon reboot it returns...As a matter of fact, It is always running...unless, of couse, I ctrl, alt, delete and delete it temporarily... I have been searching 'backdoor' trojans, to find out what the sucker is...nothing correlates. Anybody have any idea what this Robot is doing...? And yes, my system does act up at times, locks up, and freezes...And error messages come up about insufficient memory...Which seems odd...127 mb should be plenty...Anyways, is this robot dangerous to my system? I have since noticed that the robot has invaded another computer in the office too...I saw it there!! Help!!

[twedlake]

go to www.lavasoft.nu
download ad-aware and run it on your system. that should clean up anything spyware or ad banner triggers for you.

Todd

[JakeHaze]

Search your drives for files named robot. When you find them, right click them and choose properties. You should be able to see some information about the exe under the version tab.

[TonyKlein]

Go to <a target="_blank" href=http://www.spywareinfo.com/downloads.html>http://www.spywareinfo.com/downloads.html</a> , and download 'Startuplist' (in the "Startup Program Management" section).

Go to Edit &gt; select all, copy it and please post the contents here.

[trixmix]

Well, I tried one or two of these suggestions...I have poured trough EVERY file on this C: drive looking for anything that even closely resembles the word ROBOT...it got me nowhere! Oh, and adaware was unaware of how to fix it too!
But, I'll tell you what did work, for future reference!
I loaded a program from some unaffiliated windows help site called Trojan Hunter...and it had a function on it called, Process Viewer...what it does-as the name says-it shows all things that are actually in 'process' on the computer...not just open programs...(because it didn't find it there!) When I hit that, it showed me exactly where the pesky robot was hiding, & get this...he was executing from my D: drive...which is a backup drive that I don't even use...It was in a Win95 folder in the registration reminder software from Iomega for the zip drive! Which has been loaded for I dunno, a couple of years...So when I clicked on that open process...indeed it was a running process, a window came up with nothing in it but a timer counting seconds & minutes and the words..."No actions at this time", or something to that affect...So I wonder what the window said when it was actually carrying out a task...or actually doing something...I don't know because I then deleted the sucker, but I'll bet when the robot was actively 'searching or spying' or whatever it was there to do, those were probably the times when my computer was locking up & running low on resources with no programs running...or out of memory for no good reason...It explains alot...What it didn't explain is why Iomega put this intrusive gizmo into their software...or I suppose it could have came in from somewhere else and lodged itself in there! Who knows! But I do know that it wasn't there with the sole intention of reminding me to register my software!

Anyways I feel like Sam Spade for finding it! It was like pullin an eyelash out of my eye!!! Thanks for your help! Now, we have a solution that we can look into if someome asks again...because that was a pesky problem to correct!!

[TonyKlein]

Download and run StartupList, as I advised.

If you have anything at all running or starting up that shouldn't be, it will show.

[Hally]

Tony I guess he doesn't want to know if the dreaded Robot is running &\or starting on his computer lol


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