The interface between application programs and the OS includes "hooks"
which allow special programming tools ("debuggers") to monitor and even
intercept the execution of an application.  Apparently something on your
system is activating these hooks.

  With luck, it will turn out that PC-cillin just uses them, and while you
want to fix the stall, this message is not the problem.

  However, I believe there are various malwares (viruses, worms, spyware,
etc) out there which try to use these hooks to, for instance, get the
malware code to become part of a privileged application, or to detect and
avoid antivirus programs.  Indeed, the stall might be due to an interaction
between such a beast and PC-cillin.

  So I'd do a clean (floppy/CD/safe mode) boot, and a thorough scan with up-
to-date antivirus tools....

David Gillett


On 6 Apr 2004 at 9:20, Arthur Barnett wrote:

> Friends-
> My computer OS is Win 2K with 526k memory. Lately I have had a problem
> which is new to me. Sometimes a program will stall (most times it's
> PC-Cillin). In order to keep operating I try to close the stalled
> program with Ctrl-Alt-Del and then get this error message: "Program
> cannot be closed because it is being debugged". Since debugging never
> ends, I can only continue operating by restarting the system.
> What to do?
> Many thanks,
> Arthur
>
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