Ian writes:

<<some unknown process starts up
on my W98SE system.  This is indicated by the hourglass icon which appears
for a few seconds, then disappears, then returns for a few seconds, then
disappears...and so on...>>

I've occasionally seen the same thing, just spasmodic, and only fleetingly.
I don't know the answer to Ian's problem, but it has induced me to ask
something I've been meaning to ask for ages.

Does anyone know of a software that will monitor HD activity, perhaps log
it for each action so that you could look up what has taken place during
the last, say, 3 minutes?

Something like Processview, but with a log of actual activity, not just
showing what's alive.

I realise this may not be entirely practical, as you wouldn't want
something like that running all the time eating up resources, and maybe you
wouldn't get time to switch it on when you see this fleeting activity,
unless it is as ongoing as in Ian's case.

There are times (rare) when I'd love to know exactly what my HD is doing of
its own accord.

In similar vein, when one goes to the occasional Website, one can sometimes
see the modem icon flashing away for no apparent reason, obviously
downloading something (usually spyware or malware of some sort, I suspect)
without your knowledge and without any prior action on your part. The only
visible sign is the flashing modem icon.

I wonder if there's any sort of monitoring software, short of a firewall,
by which you could instantly identify or log such download, and where it
has inserted yourself deep into your system, or even by which you could
kill it before it is fully downloaded. These nasties seem to have an
uncanny ability to silently bypass most download managers.

I know AdAware can be set to block some of these. I'm interested in the
ones that get through. I'd sooner kill them at birth rather than remove
them once they're in the system, though AdAware and Spybot seem to both do
a pretty good job.

Sorry, Ian, to have to answer your query with two more of my own.  All in
the interests of science. Or just to keep us on the right side of
sanity---a difficult enough task.

Don Penlington
(From the beach Surfers Paradise).
Free computer tutorials, fractals, icons, and beautiful Queensland beaches at
http://www.geocities.com/donaldpen/

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