A couple of WinXP questions

Hi everyone,

Is a folder named AgentSS needed?...what does it do? Also, is winxp really 3 Gigs in size? My windows folder is over 3 gigs in size.

thnx

Not sure what this "AgentSS" is, but about your Windows folder question, the folder doesn't only include winxp necessary files, it also holds windows update, your temporary internet files, offline web pages ect.

I have a program that has just recently started appearing in my task mangager called agent.exe. I suspect a trojan, but haven't gotten around to gettting rid of it yet.

Like sirSub said. You windows folder does contain all of your system files, and Internet Cache. So if you don't clear you cookies, or cache every once in a while you'll have quite a bit of garbage in there taking up space.

Isn't agent.exe a newsreader program?

I don't know about AgentSS, though. What does the folder contain (including invisible files)? I'd just throw it in the trash, and leave it there, for a while before deleting it, to see if it affects you adversely or not.

Corn

A fresh install of winxp pro is about 1.5 gigs.....methinks it is time for you to do a bit of "house cleaning" on your HDD. Grab yourself a good AV program and a trojan detecter to make sure you get everything.

only one hit on google

http://lists.jammed.com/forensics/2001/10/0066.html

looks like a prog called spyagent uses a folder c:\windows\agentss.

It seems to be some sort of user installed spy prog to monitor employees etc.

http://www.spytech-web.com/spyagent.shtml
:cool:

Thank you very much....i guess i'll just delete it then since its huge

I concur with allenb1963, I used a regcleaner today and took out the garbage, about 1 gig

Hehe, I cleared up about 3 gigs the other day, got alot og junk, lol

hmmm I would be a bit cautious just deleting the folder.. I would recommend seeing if there is a listing in your add-remove programms listing.. If the folder is a programm folder.. you may have some problems.. if it is a data store folder.. it may just comeback to haunt you.. grab spybot s&d, or The cleaner.. and see what you come up with.. You may need to remove some other parts of the prog as well as registry entries....

if it is a malware.. you may need to turn off the System restore b4 doing any removal.. and remove the bugger in safe mode..

Cheers

just a caution..

Uhh, actually cache and regisrty contents are in "Documents and Settings" not in Windows folder, So I agree with the others in that you need to do some heavy duty cleaning of the HDD.

I personally like to backup all my critical data and do a fresh OS install once a year, just to make sure of things, especially since 99.99% of all programs leave traces all over the place even after being uninstalled. (Why is it called uninstall if it doesn't actually uninstall??)