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What is occuring:

Every 30 minutes (maybe every hour) or so a mystery program will originate out of no-where to load itself (or check my system?) or do whatever it does. This take approximately 1 second. And so it is an incredibly quick phenomenon.

The only reason i know it is occuring is because the window in which i am working will suddenly be deselected (although no new window will appear on my screen), the top blue-bar will go from true blue to light blue of course (indicated it is not the selected window any longer). And i will have to reclick on it in order to resume. Also, even though i "hide" my taskbar, if it happens to be up during the loading, then i will see an extra, yet standard, unlabeled "program" box sitting there for the course of that 1 second.

So far this is only mildly annoying -- mostly because i dont know what is being loaded. Furthermore, i am going to buy some games soon, and i'm really concerned that this constant event is going to interfere with my game play! If i am shooting up, and suddenly have to reclick on the screen, but my cursor isn't where i want it to be because 1 second has passed without control, i am going to be majorly steamed. It is in the interest of all gamers, to understand what the heck is going on here.

So please do help!


What is not occuring (maybe):

THESE ARE NOT "POP-UPS" in the normal use of that term. There is NO window which pops-up. (This is in response to the REPLY below -- do not reply to this message with Pop-ups problems. Start your own thread.)

There is no evidence that i can find of spyware or viruses on my computer. I did full and deep system scans using both Norton Internet Security AND Windows new spyware scanner. Nothing found. Everything looking good. Is there a better program which might catch something these two missed? Or is a loading program SO OBVIOUS that it must be caught if it was malicious?

I need some advice as to what this could be.

Either that or how can i find more details about which program is running like that? If it were truly in the background, it wouldn't be annoying. But if its something in the background that is coming to the forground every once in a while for one second -- how can i find out what it is??

Thanks!

Loading

Edited by Loading, 04 November 2005 - 11:48 PM.

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I need help from that too

i can't stop getting pop-ups

[SuperSMCow]

I need help from that too

i can't stop getting pop-ups

[pawdell]

I'm also having the exact same problem. It's hard to describe, but you did it well. I've only noticed it within the last month or about. Not sure exactly when it started. I have scanned with the latest AdAware and also have Norton Corp. v.10 with nothing detected. Although I'm not ruling out something like spyware, but I'm wondering if it's a legit program. Maybe we can compare known running programs/hardware for a common item.

I'm wondering if it has something to do with my HP PSC1315 printer software which has a program running in the background that does come up to check for newer drivers which updated maybe 2-1/2 weeks ago; maybe it's now checking for something else every 30 minutes!

The only other known updates are coming automatically from Microsoft for the Windows 2KPro Op system.

????????

[Loading]

Strange that you mention that.... my computer is a Compaq/HP, and i have an HP Photosmart 8450.

Now that you mention it, i -DO- remember HP requiring me to do some kind of software update recently -- and it must've been around the time this started. Did your thing start around the time of a software update for an HP updater??


I wouldn't know how to check if it IS HP.


How can i remove any HP -updater- driver just in case??




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[Tyger]

This may not help you, but HP and Compaq both use the Backweb Agent to communicate with their servers. You might look to see if it is running in the background when this happens.

[pawdell]

Thanks Tyger.... I'll look into that.

Loading:

I'd say it was right about the same time as that update I foolishly accepted. Can't say for sure, but....
I did stop all processes that began with HP in it's name and haven't seen the mystery program return. You might not want to try that, but maybe try right clicking on the HP icon in the system tray and stopping at least that to see if it helps you. That program would return after rebooting without further work. Again, I haven't seen it pop up, but like you said, it's so fast that I could have missed it. I'll try to pin-point it tomorrow.

I think we might have this one solved... Sort of :-)

Thanks for all the input.

[Loading]

I just realized that we both have Norton as well. I'm going to try to turn off ALL the automatic updates for Norton (turn to manual download, etc). Just in case its part of the last Norton updater update.

Will test the HP theory as well, along the lines of what you suggest.

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[pawdell]

OK - The .exe that causes the mystery program seems to be hpcmpmgr.exe. Also, it seems to be running every 15 minutes, not 30 minutes like I thought.

I'm not sure what the program does that it has to spawn something every 15 minutes, but what I have done was to rename the .exe and so far so good. I will watch more tomorrow.

HTH

[fay47]

I did a google serach and it returned quite a few hits - including:

http://www.processli...files/hpcmpmgr/
http://castlecops.co...cmpmgr_exe.html
http://www.sysinfo.o...t=50&offset=100
http://www.auditmypc...ss/hpcmpmgr.asp

Fay

[Loading]

Veeerry interesting. Every 15 minutes seems too frequent to me. I'm hoping we're still having the same problem. I honestly think mine is occuring less than twice an hour.

However, it is possible that it connects depending on your internet connection, etc. I've noticed one of the ghost windows when i start my computer up from sleep mode. This is when my computer is searching for internet access.

Do you have wireless internet? Perhaps if the signal breaks and then reestablishes, it tries to reconnect to HP or something?

Will copy and store file, but will rename the active one as you suggest and watch for any buggaboos.



ps. Thanks for the links Fay! It looks like this program is causing other problems as well:

"Checks the internet for updated drivers/utilities for your HP product - update manually. Also, disabling will obviously get rid of the more or less common error message: "Windows can't shutdown the computer because hpcmpmgr.exe can't be ended""




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[DuncanWilkie]

I'm actually having a similar problem, although I don't have an HP computer or the printer you mentioned. Sometimes when I'm playing Battlefield 2, it will cut back to windows with nothing new in the window, but if you press alt-tab it will show that IE is opening an html page, with a variety of names such as: "he4fq2ut.html". Don't know if its the same problem, but boy is it annoying!

Any guidance?

- Duncan

[Loading]

You were right, Pawdell. Its about every 10 or 15 minutes. I've been watching the clock.


(I haven't had any Explorer Windows opening, Duncan. I use Foxfire anyway. So i doubt it is the same issue. It sounds like yours is definately spyware pop-ups. Use the spyware removal techniques recommended in this forum in the Malware section and only then come back after youve tried ALL the procedures theyve recommended for removing it. If you have already tried those methods following the instructions EXACTLY, no cheating!, then by all means keep posting here. Unless.. perhaps.. Do you have an HP computer?)



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[DuncanWilkie]

No I don't use IE either, infact I'm following the instructions on getting rid of all that nonsense now! I've "locked up" IE now, so hopefully it will stop. Not an HP computer.

Cheers for the info. You're probably right.

[SuperSMCow]

try spyware doctor and regesty macanic it fixed my problem i fixed it about 3 days after my first post

[Loading]

"OK - The .exe that causes the mystery program seems to be hpcmpmgr.exe. Also, it seems to be running every 15 minutes, not 30 minutes like I thought."



This case can be considered closed now.

I am replying to *CONFIRM* that the .exe that caused this mystery problem-program was "HPCMPMGR.EXE"



For anyone experiencing pop-ups of empty PROGRAM bars in your Taskbar, every 15 minutes, which takes you off your project, messes up your mouses position, etc, etc, etc, the solution is to simply disable "hpcmpmgr.exe" which is and HP program.

I would not recommend deleting it yet, because i dont know if it will affect your ability to receive updates which might solve this problem and possibly worse problems in the future.

I also dont know if deleting it will cause any problems with any other programs.



Disabling works, however, and others can experiment as they wish.



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