System Error Icon on System Tray

Hey guys,

I understand that its normal for firewalls to detect and report blocked intrusions, but today after ZoneAlarm Pro started reporting these blocked intrusions (jumped from 2 to 28 in less than two minutes), a yellow triangular (yield) icon with an exclamation point started appearing in the system tray. Every time I clicked on it (right or left, no difference) the icon dissapeared... only to reappear a few minutes later. There was no information / balloon that accompanied this icon, so I really cant tell you more about it.

Right now the icon dissapeared and its not showing up anymore, so I was wondering: how can I obtain more information on it; or how could I know If Ive been hacked...?

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Intel Pentium III
Windows XP Pro + SP2
RAM 512Mb

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Windows Defender did NOT detect any infected files.

I upgraded to Internet Explorer 7 (v7.0.5450.4) Beta 3 recently and ever since I made the switch, Bitdefender shows an error when it tries to update the virus definitions, so I wasnt able to scan my PC with the bitdefender online scan...

 

Do you recognise the name 'rasca' ? Is it connected with your ISP ?

You don't have any malware in your Hijack this log and all activescan found was cookies. However there are a couple of small issues which I will explain when I have checked a 'proper' log (see below)

Please rename Hijackthis.exe to analyze.exe as per the steps so I can see if anything is hiding from it.

The yellow icon is used by windows security centre but is often used by smitfraud type infections to prompt you to download rogue programs.

Adaware only found a couple of MRU lists that are of no consequence.

 

Hey matt.chugg!

• Racsa IS my Internet Service Provider
• Im attaching a new HJT log, sorry for not reading the steps correctly...

Thanks for your help!

 

How do you have automatic updates configured ? When windows is downloading updates it will show a yellow icon. If you hover the mouse over it it will tell you the progress of download and nothing more. As I can see no evidence of a malware infection in your hjt log I would be inclined to say not to worry about it, If the icon comes back then hover the mouse over it and see what it says. Also run HJT and post a log here, we will be able to see if theres a running process that is causing it then.

 

Windows updates are configured to download automatically, however the icon it displayes when downloading is a yellow shield... this icon was a yield sign (triangular shape, yellow background with an exclamation sign) When I hovered my mouse over it it but it didnt say anything: it disappeared as soon as I pointed to it.

After it dissapeared, I went to system tray properties, customizing notifications, and under the Past column, it read "System error" beside the yield icon.

Anyways... if all the malware scans I did came back negative (only cookies and MRU lists that were of no consequence), and my HJT log was clean I wont give it anymore thought... Besides it hasnt showed up again.

Thanks for looking over my test results and helping me out matt.chugg...

 

Often when you hover the mouse over an icon in the tray and it just disapears it is because the program that was running that was displaying the icon is no longer running. (try it! run a program that goes to the tray like MSN messeger, and then kill it from task manager and the icon persists. move the mouse over it then it disapears!)

As I said. if it comes back, come back and let us know and we can find out what it is.

 

Thanks a lot for all your help! If it comes back on I'll post a new HJT log...