just wondering if somebody could tell me what waol.exe is? it is in my windows folder and zone alarm keeps on telling me that it is trying to connect to the internet. I find this strange as i don't use aol... Any ideas???

thanks

miguel

It tells here:

To find out what each Startup(or Process) item does or means:

http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm

Waol.exe is part of AOL dialup files. Did you ever installed AOL on your PC in the past?

It is normally part of AOL but I don't think it should be in the windows directory.

Deny it acxcess and do a virus scan.

I am having the same problems with waol.exe. It repeatedly tries to access the Internet. I have never used AOL!
Any suggestions to remove it please? I have tried several times without success.
None of my virus/Spyware checkers finds it pres' because it is 'legit'.

Just solved my own problem.
Clean Disk Security has wiped it. :-)
Just in case, I have copied it to a floppy.

Iīve the same problem. Each time I run my explorer, the waol.exe file appears bringing a virus Trj/Conspy.A wich is detected and wiped. I never used AOL and I donīt have this file in my computer. Anybody can help me?

the same thing keeps happening to me, although my computer has recently been infected by 'background.trojan' could they be related? search your computer for this file, if you have it then delete it

If you have AOL installed you should not delte this file as it is one of AOL core components. If you do not have AOL installed, DELETE IT!!! the is a high propability that it might containe a backdoor. I have deleted it savely. This file was detected by Noton Anti-Virus Corpotate Edition.

Lance

True that you should not remove a key component of an application. I don't use AOL but doubt that it would install to the C:\WINDOWS directory! The instance of waol.exe that is described above is a trojan virus.

Use "Windows update" more regularly so you have the latest security patches. Go into Internet Explorer - Tools - Windows Update.

Microsoft are constantly closing "buffer overrun" security holes.

Norton should detect it but may not be able to remove it properly because the file is in use.

The following Norton link describes how to remove it properly.

http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/trojan.conspy.html

As you can see it writes to the registry and will be running as soon as you boot up.

Kind regards,
Nick

the file c:\windows\waol.exe is part of a bunch of spyware and dialers wich are downloaded from conf.spycon.com
the list of files are :
editpad.exe
editpad.rsf
waol.exe
dnse.dll
and they are all located in c:\windows\
do not enter the http://conf.spycon.com
with cokies and medium security ennabled in your IE cause you ll get infected as well
It seems this is brand new spyware cause the removing programs cannot detect it

I have aol and I get an error message at sign on screen waol.exe unable to locate component. This application has failed to start b/c xmlparse.dll was not found. Re-installing application may fix the problem.
I can still sign on and my computer runs as normal. Is this possible spyware? I have McAfee, Noadware, and PC Doctor and nothing seems to pick it up or fix it. I checked for the background trojan and nothing. If this is a core program would aol still be able to function properly? If not where do I go to re-install it? I really hate to call Aol because most of the time they dont know what they are doing, not that I do.
Thanks
Monica