I noticed a large spike (586 events a minute) associated with updaterservice.wildtangent.com. After some poking around, I found that Wild Tangent is installed with version 5.5 of the AIM chat client. Now, I'm sure this has been mentioned before but I think it is worth another mention.

Anyway, SpyBot and Ad-Aware did *not* remove Wild Tangent when installed by AIM. I dug up some removal instructions that do work (I forget where I got them).

1. Close AIM
2. Open my computer and navigate to the folder \Program Files\AIM
3. Delete the file AIMWDInstall
4. Navigate to the folder \Program Files\AIM\Sysfiles
5. Delete the file AIMWDInstall (do not delete AIMWDUninstall)
6. Open add/remove programs in the control panel
7. Uninstall WildTangent multiplayer library
8. Uninstall WildTangent Web Driver
9. Uninstall WildTangent Updater
10. Restart the computer
11. Navigate to the folder C:\Program Files
12. Delete the WildTangent folder
13. Navigate to the folder C:\WINDOWS
14. Delete the wt folder
15. Open start/run and type regedit
16. Delete the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WildTangent
17. Add the domain wildtangent.com to the IE restricted sites zone (even
if you don't use IE)
18. If this is the only user account on this PC you're done, if not keep
reading
19. Open regedit again
20. Navigate to the key
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\ZoneMap\Domains
21. Right click on it and hit export
22. Type a name for the file and save it to C:\Documents and Settings\All
Users\Documents or any other place that all accounts can access
23. Log into each account, double click on the file, and hit yes in the
box that appears
24. You're done

This worked fine for me. Now I have to script it and blow it out to all the users who installed AIM 5.5.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRR!