I am running about a 5yr old self assembled computer.
I have 1gb ram 64 bit amd cpu (oldest one out there)
dual 80 gb hdrives
radeon 9250 vid card
internal audio and ethernet
windows xp home sp 3
office 2007 standard
I have configured sysinternals procexp to start automatically at boot up.
The question is this:
when booting, there is a period of time when nothing shows as running in procexp.
however, there is a message that no firewall is installed and at the same time, no network activity icons are showing.
this lasts about a minute, the the network icons appear and the "no firewall" message dissappears.
What I am wondering about is, could my computer have been hijacked as a robot and the hacker has written software using a rootkit to disable the firewall and network icons while it does it's dirty work? then after it logs my computer in as "available" (to the remote system) it returns control to my operating system.
I have run various rootkit revealers and found nothing.
You said: when booting, there is a period of time when nothing shows as running in procexp. Is that means a rootkit temporary disable the firewall and Process Explorer, because this program have to show the rest of running processes all the time? Maybe it is problem with Process Explorer freezing, but let's try to find out what happened.
Is there a period of time when you hadn't this problem? What's remarkably happened before you noticed this? Do you have problem with PC at all?
My recommendation: try Sysinternals Process Monitor instead Process Explorer with command Enable Boot Logging, and after booting you'll find very detailed report (in my report I found 496.000 events) about every ran process on booting time. If necessarily try in Normal and Safe mode and notice difference.
If you have concerns about a poissible malware infection, the best course if to go to the Spyware / Malware / Virus Removal forum, read the info there and follow the posted directions. Once you receive a clean bill of health, come back here if you have any additional questions or concerns or it turns out not to be a malware problem.
