My brother tells me that he received an attachment in an e-mail, which he tried to open but when double clicking it nothing loaded. He deleted the file and thought nothing of it. Since then, on shut down, a windows box comes up saying "End Program - explorer.exe" which goes away after 3 or 4 seconds before shutting down. I've performed several virus scans and nothing has been detected. However, i've heard that explorer.exe can be a worm or virus which might not be detected by scans. It may be nothing, but as this has never happened before, and only started once my brother tried to open an attachment, i thought it was suspicious. Is there any way to check that this is malicious?

Search for explorer.exe and make sure that it is in this directory: C:\Windows if not then you have a virus.

You should have Posted this in the Security and Virus forum. Open Task Manager to see if you may have more than one explorer.exe running. To find out what each Startup(or Process) item does or means, and any recommendation as to if you should close the process: http://www.answersthatwork.com/Task... Task List Programs OR http://www.processlibrary.com/ The Process Library

Thank you for replying, i did not see the security and virus forum, and was not sure if this would be a problem with XP itself. Though i only have one explorer.exe running in task manager, and explorer.exe is still in the C:\Windows directory. The message has only started to appear within the last week.

In Task Manager, if you have MORE THAN ONE explorer.exe shown, then you have a problem. More than one can show if each is in a different Directory. You can Try System Restore to a date when all was good. Start >All Programs >Accessories >System Tools Using System Restore too many times can cause more harm than good. After doing a restore that does not fix a problem, then UNDO the Restoration, and try another restore point, or just do the UNDO. http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pr... Frequently Asked Questions Regarding System Restore in Windows XP

There's just the one explorer.exe running in task manager. I've checked out information on all other processes running on start up too, and nothing seems malicious. My computer is showing no signs of a virus. Speed is good and there are no pop ups. It's just this one window that comes up for a couple of seconds on shut down. Which is why i don't think it's a virus, but something actually to do with Windows Explorer. There must be a reason why it takes a while to close when shutting down. I just can't think what. I didn't add anything to the computer before it started happening. However, last week i got rid of a pesky Trojan.Vundo virus (i had to be instructed to use ComboFix in the end) and during the clean-up process all the system restore points were cleared, which means i can't go back to an earlier date.

Katherine, Look at this link. http://www.computing.net/answers/se... google search "WinXP "End Program - explorer.exe"on shutdown". Produced the above and other hits. There is nothing to learn from someone who already agrees with you.