Not my Paranoia: Two things

[funkmeister99]

1. Soundman. I restarted my computer via Windows Vista update, and I received a program called "Soundman.exe" At the bottom (where all those small icon things are) it says "Sound Effect"

Is this something from Microsoft? Did anyone else receive it?

2. Rundll32 has stopped working. I received this error message, I don't know what it is, but since it says "32" on it, I'm assuming, whatever it is that stopped working is bad. I've only visited this website ever. Why did Rundll32 stop working (whatever it is)?

[shelf life]

soundman.exe is a gui for your pci or onboard audio. clicking the icon in the tray should bring up audio options. windows update can update some hardware with the latest drivers. it most likely appeared after the update. the other one is probably related to a certain software package you are using.

[drragostea]

funkmeister, Soundman.exe (I usually find it on HP computers) would be more like the volume control" on our systems. It's just like adjusting the volumes. Like shelf life said, you have received a update for your driver. You can hide the icon anytime you want, but I wouldn't find it a bother. As for the "rundll32.exe", I think it's for when you "update" something... like a driver from Microsoft Update.

http://www.processlibrary.com/directory/?files=rundll32.exe

http://www.processlibrary.com/directory/?files=soundman.exe

This site will tell you what the process is... however, I would suggest you just "avoid" the ads. By this I mean like avoid the clickable links like "Free Windows XXXX (blah blah)". Or "Free performance scan". Avoid those garbage.

[funkmeister99]

Thanks to both of you.

P.S. My Trend Micro IS blocks those advertisements:

Resource hogging Trend Micro IS? 50$

Great protection? Priceless.

For the things you can't defend yourself against, there's Trend Micro Internet Security.

[drragostea]

Oh wow, funkmeister99... Lols, you got that from the MasterCard Commerical. Did you read my post in the last thread? I mean like the thread where you said something about Kaspersky not scanning locked files.

[drragostea]

~AVG 8.0 Free: Resource Hog.
~ZoneAlarm Free: Silent Firewall
~WinPatrol 2008: Joy.
~Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.14: Use protection.
~Spybot-SD: Let's go hunting.
~SpywareBlaster v.4.0: Guns and armor.

Line of cyber-arsenals: Priceless.

Hahas, you don't have to necessarily purchase IS for great protection. It's does not matter how much AV or how well-known the firewall is. It is user decision.

~Auslogics Disk Defrag and Registry Defrag (apologies for mentioning 3rd party applications)
~Some tweaks
= Smooth Running XP OS on 512 MB of RAM >;P