Could someone explain its function and how it works. Thank you.

You can find out what any file does by right clicking it and choosing "Properties" from the menu. In this particluar case, "pstores.exe" is the application which controls certain areas of the operating system like "System Restore" which is a protected area.

Protected Storage, or PSTORES.EXE, to store all sorts of secure information; * S/MIME keys for digitally signed and encrypted email or web site authentication * Profile Assistant information such as your address or email address given to web sites * Passwords for programs such as Outlook Express, or Outlook '98 - SSL Certificates for Web Servers Protected Storage, or PSTORES, has to be one of the most veiled technologies that Microsoft has produced. A thorough search of their public web sites turns up very little information indeed (http://www.microsoft.com/wallet/overview/faq.asp#privatestore is about it). Never the less, since PSTORES seems to be under the control of the IE development group, that group also seems to be in control of its revisions and updates. So when a Service Pack is released (at least post-IE 3.02, which was the first version of IE to use PSTORES), anything it might do that interacts with or augments PSTORES needs to have the current shipping version of PSTORES present first.

Worm, if I were to right click on it. It would give me the "Company Name", "File Version Description", "Internal Name"(Protected storage server), "Language","Original Filename", "Product Name"(Microsoft(R)Windows(R)2000 Operating System), "Product Version", "Size", "Location" Thank you. Brant, I'm sorry it's IE 5.51.4807.2300 with updates. Off the top of my head don't remember the pstores.exe version. Thank you for the info. I'll Try