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www.exe
I have a problem... every time I leave my computer for a bit then come back to it later it brings up a dos window trying to run something called www.exe - I have no idea what this! Can anyone shed any light on what it is or how to remove it please?!!
jwatt
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June 7th, 2005 19:00
Searching Google for "www.exe" turns out to be very difficult, because many completely extraneous "hits" are returned. There seem to be two possibilities: It's part of a worm, as described in this Symantec article or this one from Viruslist.com, or it's part of a product called "Gordano Messaging Suite", mentioned in this article. I suppose a third one is that it's an entirely new name for some sort of spyware/malware. The Symantec article is very unlikely, because the infection mechanism described won't work on XP. The discussion in the Viruslist article is relevant to XP, and both discuss a worm that steals address from MS Outlook's address book and uses them to propagate. If you've never heard of the "Gordano Messaging Suite", then that's not relevant either.
I'd suggest treating the problem as likely a virus or malware, and proceeding as follows.
First, make sure your antivirus software definitions are current, and scan your system for viruses. If nothing's found, try getting a "second opinion" by running TrendMicro's online virus scanner, "HouseCall".
If scanning for viruses doesn't resolve the problem, download, install, update and run Ad-Aware and Spybot as described in this article.
If the problem still isn't resolved, download HijackThis, a malware analysis and removal tool, and submit the log it produces for analysis as described below.
Here's an illustrated guide to installing and running HijackThis that you may find helpful.
With the Windows Explorer, go to C:\, right click and create a folder named HJT. Unzip the downloaded file hijackthis.zip into the newly created directory, C:\HJT.
After installing HijackThis.exe in the directory C:\HJT, run Hijackthis from that directory. Click on the 'scan' button and then 'save log' button. Copy and paste the contents of the text file you saved in a new message in the HijackThis board for review. Be sure to post the log in a new message, and describe the problem you're experiencing. DON'T ATTEMPT TO FIX ANYTHING REPORTED BY HIJACKTHIS without expert advice!
Jim