Take for example, Shockwave Player. The latest, version 10, comes with an updater that for some reason puts an icon on your taskbar. It's different from the usual stuff you know should be there. You can't right or left click on it. It sits there mocking you.
Oh yeah? Do the 3 finger salute - control, Alt, Delete - in XP and bring up the little task manager. Find "PostUpdater.exe" and End Process. There'll be a little scary warning box, but still say Yes. Now, on our system, the Shockwave Updater icon doesn't disappear immediately, so I do the salute again and then just exit out of that. Usually it goes away right then.
So what is it? If it's where it's supposed to be - windows/ system 32/ Macromed/ Shockwave 10/ directory, then it's safe, essentially. Some people have reported false anti-virus positives with other copies not where it's supposed to be. I imagine it's some automagical updater in case Shockwave suddenly needs to be updated.
Sorry, Adobe. Let me decide when to update Shockwave, thank you very much. Our system had Shockwave version 8 on there as well!!!
So anywho, as long as the process has terminated, go find the directory where PostUpdater.exe is and rename it. I used the "nxe" extension. Close all windows and restart the system. Now this time it shouldn't come back.
One word of note - when I shut down the system the first time after this restart after renaming the file and getting rid of the Shockwave Update icon, there was some warning box that flashed up for a microsecond before the system shut down. It might have not been anything, but I wanted to know what that was. I turned on our 'puter again, looked at it load the way we're used to and then re-shut down. The warning box did not pop up again. Hmmm.. Oh well, maybe it'll show up next time. (shrug) I hope it doesn't.
The file I renamed appeared as a 52K file, btw.
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