There's a good likelihood you have a trojan.
Boot to safe mode by hitting F8 every few seconds while the machine is in the black and white POST screens, before the Windows splash screen and you should get the Boot Menu...choose Safe Mode. This will bypass loading of what's causing it (hopefully).
Then when you get to the desktop, go to the Start/Run and type msconfig and hit enter.
When the dialog box opens click on Startup tab and scroll thru the checkboxes until you find Media Load Installer. There is a program you've picked up (apparently) that uses this exec. Uncheck the box and you should then be able to reboot normally...leaving it disabled.
When you get it running, visit here:
and there should be advice on getting rid of it.
Running one of the free trojan finders periodically seems to be one of the necessities of surfing.
Running Kazaa and ICQ are security vulnerabilities that are exploited like this.
Just as a sidenote, dw.exe is also the command file for the Dr. Watson program included on most Windows installs. It is nothing more than a diagnostic and error reporting program. You know the message you get about.. Your computer has recovered from a major error. Do you want to send a report to Microsft".. That is from Dr. Watson or dw.exe.
Agreed it "MAY" be spyware, but you should have researched a little better first..
DW.exe is a feedback tool that Microsoft uses to analyze and develop fixes for instances of crashes on users' computers. DW.exe is included with all editions of Office and is installed by default with Office XP.
DW.exe starts automatically whenever a crash is detected. The program that crashes is automatically shut down. Before relevant crash data can be lost, DW.exe captures user settings that are related to the crash from both the registry and the current memory block where the program is running. DW.exe then packages the data and any supporting files, such as the file that was being worked on at the time of the crash, templates if needed, and any associated files in use by the program during the crash, and submits the information to Microsoft for analysis.
The dw.exe you're referring to isn't the one i'm talking about that's spyware. The dw.exe i'm referring to and the one that MREDCROW1 has IS no doubt spyware. It's installed covertly by something called Downloadware or Media Load Installer. And as i said, Ad-aware will detect and remove it.
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