Two issues, if anyone can help I'd really appreciate it. 1. I notice smss.exe is running in task manager. Also csrss.exe. My understanding is that these may be associated with a virus/trojan? Google results indicate that it is a system file but can also be malicious. It seemed to suggest that if it was in the System32 folder it was alright. Well smss is within C:\WINDOWS\system32 while there is another file which is SMSS.exe which is within C:\I386\SYSTEM32. The one in capitals is 459kb while the other is 50kb. The one in capitals shows up in windows search results in blue for some reason. As for the csrss.exe it is only in C:\WINDOWS\system32 and is 6kb. What action should I take? How can I tell if this is a virus or normal? Why is there two files with the same name, one in capitals? There was variety of information on this page:http://www.neuber.com/taskmanager/process/smss.exe.html but too many different opinions. None of my virus scanners seem to pick up anything relevant. My other problem is that Windows spyware pops up on start up and said something like "C:Windows...Reset.bat" was stopped from running as it could have ran a script to do anything to your computer etc. Is this supposed to happen? Why does Windows see this windows file as a problem? Indicative of a virus? I started running anti-spyware and virus software and found some junk like cookies and some registry key thing or two but nothing that looked this malicious, just things like alexa and cassiva related. I run Windows XP SP2 amd 64 processor. Thanks for any help.

It sounds normal. The one in the "I386" folder is a copy of the file. The "I386" folder is sort of a copy of the Windows CD. It is in blue because it is automatically compressed to save space. Those are system files and should be running. Only worry about it if a) one of your virus scanners alerts you to a problem (on a side note, you should only be running one anti virus program at a time) or b) you see more than one instance of Csrss.exe and smss.exe running in task manager. -Ryan Adams http://ryanadams.blogsite.org