TheTechMen

Ever seen tons of processes running in the background of your PC when you hold down CTRL+ALT+DELETE and click on the “processes” tab?

You may be surprised to know what some of these processes are. If you spot one that looks suspicious, you may want to check it out. Chances are it’s probably something harmless, but it’s always better to be on the safe side.

To check these processes, write down the name(s) like I’ve done here:

firefox.exe
avp.exe
googletalk.exe

Now pick one of these websites below to check the process with:

http://www.processlibrary.com/directory/
http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm
http://www.google.com/

Any of them work well, but the first one is the one I use the most. These websites will let you search for the name of the process that you are suspicious of and will provide you with info on what it is. If you can’t find information on one of the sites, try the other. If both fail, Google is always a trusty solution.

In my case, this is the information I collected about the three processes I looked up:

firefox.exe – simply my web browser
avp.exe – part of Kaspersky Anti-Virus
googletalk.exe – Google’s Talk application

Some processes are self-explanatory thanks for their name, others are not. But even if something looks to be real because of its name, don’t always trust it. If you’re suspicious of a process, always check it to verify that you don’t have a virus or trojan horse of some sort.

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