Whenever I boot up I get a message from my firewall asking me if I want to allow iexplore.exe and one other exe file to access the internet. I know that these can in certain circumstances be connected to a virus. So far I have denied them access. How do I tell if it is OK to allow access to thee programs.

For iexplorer.exe THIS may help warn you.

and one other exe file to access the internet

I havbe no clue what you are asking.

i_XpUser

Oooooh. Malware found. Thanks for the response. Prevx1 did the job.

For future reference:

explorer.exe is Windows Explorer

iexplore.exe is Internet Explorer

iexplorer.exe is a Virus

So it pays to be quite exact about these files. You struck lucky because XpUser guessed you might be meaning iexplorer.exe rather than iexplore.exe

DerekW

I don't think you are right about that. To quote Prevx1:

iexplore.exe 67kb jailed malware location c:\windows/system32

Trojans lurk in unexpected places!

Dyspeptic Spirit

No, #3 is perfectly correct but only a summary not a thesis.

The name of "any" valid system file can be picked up and used as malware/trojan if it is placed in some other location, so it would it would have been foolish of me to deem all system file names as "nasties" when summarizing the general situation. To do so would lead to folk wrecking their machines.

This "file name stealing" is usually intentional in order to fool those who lack detailed knowledge. It is therefore worth folk making themselves aware of as many of the correct locations as possible. Google usually helps define good or bad locations.

DerekW