Mystery Processes

[dunnjt]

Recently I got an email notice that my computer had sent a message infected with the Smartfool worm, AKA Netsky.  Running my antivirus program detected no infection.
As all this malware continues to run rampant, I would like to become more proficient at protecting my computer and being able to identify proceses that are currently running.  The process names do not give a clue if they are friendly, necessary or destructive items.  Is there a resource list available somewhere so that I can identify good/bad processes and deal with the bad ones?  
Thank you,
Jerry D.

[jambutty]

If you are certain that your machine is clean don’t worry about it. The chances are that your machine hasn’t sent an infected message.

For the future what you can do is put your own email address in your address book and then if something nasty does get onto your machine and starts to send out emails you will get one also and thus know about it. Put your own email address in three times, once so that it is near the top of your list once in the middle and once near the end because some viruses only use the top or bottom few in your address book.

Hope that helps.

[Ekstasy]

If you search for the name of the process at Google, you'll usually be able to find quick info on whether or not they are harmful.

[Ryan F]

[quote name=\'jambutty\' date=\'Feb 28 2005, 10:13 AM\']For the future what you can do is put your own email address in your address book...

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[/quote]

Actually, this is a myth. The virus can send an email to your address w/ no problem. It will just keep re-infecting your pc.