Quick Question

I didn't post logs from the READ & RUN ME due to the fact I have already done that about 6 months ago and then again about 2 weeks ago. In addition, this may or may not be malware related...

About a week and 1/2 ago, I noticed something randomly appear in the task bar labeled as "monitor." It was obviously minimized because it hadn't popped up on the desktop for me to see. So, I clicked on it and in the top right corner of the desktop appeared a small blank window with "monitor" in the title bar and "about:blank" in the address bar. It quickly disappered from the desktop, but ot from the taskbar. It continues to do this for as many times as I try to maximize it to the desktop. If I right click on it in the taskbar and click close, it goes away. The occurrence seems to be intermittent with no apparent trigger. Sometimes I'm surfing the web, but not on any sites that I haven't been to before without trouble, sometimes the computer is just sitting with nothing, but AIM on. It's appeared maybe 5 or 6 times if I had to count.

Any ideas as to what this nuisance is and possible ways to get rid of it altogether?

 

The only thing installed on this computer is the Adobe Reader 8.1 upgrade just yesterday. Other than that, not a thing has been installed or removed. I say that with 100% assuredness(word?)

At any rate, I will go through the Read and Run Me again and post logs in a few hours.

Thanks for the reply.

 

Good point. I didn't consider updates. In that case my Anti-virus updates its definitions every day and if there was a last windows update, that would've been automatically updated as well. Anti-Spyware hasn't had new definitions yet.

I will just post logs...

 

Logs...

I received an error:

An error occurred while processing your request.
Reference #97.ff18fa8.1181954221.dbb5dab

in the pop-up window for Panda Scan. I tried three times.

 

Logs...

The HJT log is WITHOUT the Monitor window showing up. I'm not sure what to tell you about trying to run a HJT log when it appears because the thing is completely random. It might be a day or 15 minutes before it shows up.

If/When it does though, I will be sure to check out Task Manager and run HJT to create a log.

 

That's weird, I don't use AOL and I haven't updated AIM or installed anything even related to it. Is Viewpoint only related to AOL software?

I was finally able to get Panda Scan to work if that matters at all, but it appears I'm getting an error when I try to upload saying that I already uploaded that attachment from a completely separate thread. Although it looks like the only thing it picked up was the cookie that you you pick up from the majorgeeks website, Tribalfusion.

At any rate, I have deleted Viewpoint via Add/Remove.

 

Interesting. I faithfully shutdown my laptop everynight before going to sleep, so AIM is restarted every single day and it's never re-installed Viewpoint until this time around for whatever reason.

Well, thanks for the help as always.

 

Alright, I performed both suggestions and removed CounterSpy

 

Just an update to this previous problem... The monitor window popped up again jsut a few minutes ago. I was going to run HKT while it was open. I shut down all IE windows and I exited AIM and when I exited AIM, the monitor window disappeared. This leads me to believe that it must be something related to AIM software.