Is Taskeng.exe spyware?

I run Vista Home Basic x64 so you know how limited good x64 antispyware utilities are for it. Having said that, I got desperate the other night and while surfing, bumped into a program called "WinCleaner AntiSpyware". it's from the same people that brought you that temp, junk and registry utility called WinCleaner.

Now I do run Spyware Doctor, but it's an older version that, in reality, is not even supposed to be working on x64, but it does. So I went looking for something else to augment that. Anything decent, I thought.

While Spyware Doctor has only turned up a Trojan called explorer.exe, WinCleaner alerted to Taskeng.exe in System32, which, as we all know is a key part of the Operating System.

But then I opened up Task Manager and I saw that there were two instances of Taskeng running, which I thought was odd. Is this normal? And do you think this was just a false positive?

Taskeng.exe creates running scheduled task(s) one of which may have been deemed to be malware (rightly or wrongly). See:

Numerous taskeng.exe processes - Microsoft Windows Vista Community Forums - Vistaheads

__________________
Vincent P

MALWARE: READ FIRST Procedures:
|_ SpyBot V1.5 _|_ HijackThis LOG __V2.0.2 _|

__
ASAP: promoting a high standard and quality of security support no matter where you seek help.

VopThis..Thanks for replying. You are absolutely right about Taskeng. After I wrote you guys, I checked my Sysinternals Process Explorer and clarified exactly what was going on. One Taskeng was handling three different tasks, including one that was multimedia.

The other Taskeng was handling another one of those generic Microsoft tasks. So I feel better about things now. Also, I guess that funky WinCleaner Antispyware, which I kinda knew was a piece of junk even before I out it own, saw it as a false positive. I have since uninstalled it, along with that old Spyware Doctor I mentioned. The one that's not even supposed to run on x64!

The reason I am also uninstalling the older Spyware Doctor is because I believe that, because of incompatibility, it is probably picking up false positives much more than a modern x64 compatible version would. Twice now it has alerted on exlporer.exe in the System 32 folder and each time it listed it as a trojan, each with a different name.

Then it recommended that I reboot to get rid of it, which I did. What are your feelings on this?. As far as I know, there's no way to infect a key windows component like explorer.exe, is there? Either way I still uninstalled it.

While were on the subject of antispyware apps, I just have one more question. I have have tried CounterSpy before in the past and like it very much. I would love to add that as my main antispyware app, but one thing about it bugs me. It always runs in the system tray, eating up resources, even if it is unchecked to run at startup in msconfig.

I emailed Sunbelt Software about this and they said that's the way it was designed. Is there anyway that you know of to have it not run in the system tray upon startup?

Quick initial response:

The ONLY valid/legit (VISTA) FILE PATH for EXPLORER.EXE should be:

C:\windows\explorer.exe

SEE:
c:\windows\explorer.exe vista - Google Search

All other FILE PATHS (such as SYSTEM32) will generally be guaranteed to be malware.

__________________
Vincent P

MALWARE: READ FIRST Procedures:
|_ SpyBot V1.5 _|_ HijackThis LOG __V2.0.2 _|

__
ASAP: promoting a high standard and quality of security support no matter where you seek help.

See if the following links help:

Antispyware Software - Download a Trial of CounterSpy Antispyware Today!


SEE also: How to Temporarily Disable your Anti-malware Scanners

How To Temporarily Disable Your Anti-virus, Firewall And Anti-malware Programs

__________________
Vincent P

MALWARE: READ FIRST Procedures:
|_ SpyBot V1.5 _|_ HijackThis LOG __V2.0.2 _|

__
ASAP: promoting a high standard and quality of security support no matter where you seek help.