Hi Kathy,
Firstly, you did exactly the right thing by not clicking it - the first step to good security is awareness.
Can you tell us a bit about this laptop please? Acer? Gateway? Has that password thing always been there since you bought it?
Regards,
Golden
Go in start menu then click run and type, msconfig go in start up tab...you can slice the list with screenshots using the capture tool...
So then, reboot and see if it reappears!!
HP Pavillion dv5
I see this icon everytime i startup the computer.
Sometimes it suddenly disappears, but this time it took so much time than ever to let me Prntscrn of it .
and now .. it disappeared again ..
Kathy: in that case you either have a so called "Dropper" on your system or you visit pages that upload that exe to your computer again and again...
If you have Malwarebytes run a full scan and it doesn't find the dropper, there is no way of knowing what really causes this file to reappear.
If it comes through the browser, I would switch off Javascript, stay away from any P2P Soft for the time being
It could even come through some Flashplayer etc...
You could also test some online AVs from this thread:
https://www.sevenforums.com/security-...ner-sites.html
-DG
Ok guys, I'll do all steps you wrote..
I'll check after Online scanning and rebooting if it appears another time, If yes, so I'll replay back..
Thought that first of bloatwares password recovery from the manufacturer...but if it isn't inside an uninstaller then...might be a malware.
one more idea in case the culprit can't been found:
Make sure you see extensions of known files
next time when the exe reappears, delete it and then take any Text file, name it "GET ALL PASSWORDS.EXE"
Set it to read only and see if that malware file comes back by getting around this "construct"
I bet it doesn't
-DG
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