At 12:00 AM 9/14/2007 -0400, you wrote: >I've accepted so much garbage that I can't find = >anything that even looks like a possibility. Can anyone at PC-SOFT = >offer suggestions?>> Try System Restore. Or, if you do regular registry backups as you should, try a registry restore. Passwords are often stored in the registry. Open Regedit and run a search for the password. If it's in the registry, a search might lead to its parent program. Without knowing what steps you've already taken or what OS you have, it's difficult to advise further. There are many security progs which might use the term "Security Adviser", so you'll have to look carefully thru your Program Files to see which progs are active. Run a Startup Manager (or msconfig if you have nothing better) and disable all your startups that you don't recognise. Reboot and see if that stops it. Run Task Manager and see if you can spot whatever security prog may be causing it, then turn it off. Zone Alarm Pro, and maybe Nortons I think have "Security Advisers". Perhaps you've activated one of them. Nortons can be very aggressive with its "protection". Though I've never seen a ZA Pro or Nortons password protection facility (but I've never looked for one). Your suspicions may be correct. If it's intended to be a very strong protection, it should be impossible to remove without some fairly drastic action. Security programs are written with the intention of being "tamper-proof" once activated. It protects you against any other program or malware trying to disable the protection. In so doing, it may also be protecting you "against yourself". Until you find what program it is, you're pretty much up the creek without the proverbial paddle. There's a very good freeware utility called "Process Explorer" by Sysinternals (now owned by Microsoft---http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/default.mspx ) which will give you good details about what's running--that might spot the culprit. Don Penlington From the Beach at Surfers Paradise in sunny Queensland. Computer tutorials, local scenery, and other things at my website: http://users.tpg.com.au/deepend/index1.html The NOSPIN Group Promotions is now offering our special coffee cups and mouse pads with the PCSOFT logo... at a great price!!! http://freepctech.com/goodies/promotions.shtml