I have a question that maybe someone is able to answer.

I was using my system running Windows 2000 Professional and for absolutely no reason, a blue icon appeared in the taskbar and began flashing for 10 or so seconds. This icon beeped every time it flashed, and then vanished afterwards and I cannot find a trace of it.

It was a strange looking icon. It had a horizontal bar down the left side and two or three vertical bars next to it.

I have already done a virus check, but its possible that my scanner (updated McAfee) didn't catch it. I don't know what it is, but it has made me somewhat concerned.

Any ideas?

-Shawn

Does it do this during startup or just ramdomly... You can open task manager and look under "processes". If you find some process that looks like it should be there (of if you find it eating up alot of processor time and memory suspicously), you can most likely terminate it...

It would be a good idea to see what starts up with your computer by looking in the registry (since I cant find msconfig, if it exists on 2k). I dont know the key off-hand though for startup processes. If you do this... be careful, it is easy to fu** up your comp while in the registry.

Next time it flashes, do a screen shot and post it here... I'm kinda curious. It sounds like it could be a new virus (trojan), or spyware. Let us know if you can track it down...

I would install a firewall that lets you check traffic, for each program. Just in case...

Here is an image in paint I made that looks very similar to the icon I saw.

I have only seen it once. I use MSCONFIG for Win2K, I think it is the XP version.

It was funny because as soon as I saw it, I loaded the Windows Task Manager and didn't see anything suspicous.

The icon looked something like the attachment...

thats odd...

I would get a firewall and see if it is trying to access the internet. your it could be something you installed. I don't recognise the icon though...

I'm using a hardware firewall, but may load up ZoneAlarm for the time being to be safe...

-Shawn

Ad aware found a program called Timesink, a spyware application installed with CuteFTP. It looks to have been the problem as it has the same icon as the one that showed up in the taskbar. I removed it though a long and tedious process, but I am glad to have it gone... :) :) :)

-Shawn