when you say a prog executed i'm assuming you are concerned about your firewall...and not some other prog...

under xp and win2k...firewalls and av services load on boot...so you don;t need to logon on to "activate" them...

i think this is probably a good thing...means your firewall is active before logon...unlike ZA...which as we discovered some time ago isn't active before logon....under w98 anyways...za is loaded as a service on boot by win2k...so it is "ok" except for the big hole you can find by searching the ao archives..