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Thursday, June 21, 2012

How to find and stop hidden programs running on Windows 7


At any given time, there may be some hidden programs running on your computer. Some of these processes are merely part of your Windows operating system. Others may be viruses, adware or spyware that have been hidden from view. However, you can use an anti-spyware program to find and remove virus and block this type of malware from your computer.

There is a tool installed with Windows, called MSConfig that allows you to quickly see what’s running at startup and let you disable the programs you prefer to run as needed. Find easy steps below -

How to find and stop hidden programs running on Windows 7
Step 1: Press 'Clt + Alt + Del' to open Windows Task Manager. Click the 'Process' tab to view list of processes that are currently running on your computer, also see how much memory the process is using under the 'Mem Usage' tab.

Step 2: Now right click the 'Start' button and click 'Explorer' to open Windows Explorer. Select the 'Organize' drop-down menu and choose 'Folder and Search Options'. Click the 'View' tab and select 'Show Hidden Files and Folders'.

Step 3: Again go to 'Start' and type the name of the hidden program you are searching for. The program should appear in the search results.

Step 4: Right-click the file in the search results and click 'Open File Location'. Browse the folder to see what program the process belongs to.

Step 5: If you haven't located it and want to stop it from running, type 'msconfig' into the 'Search/Run' command. Go to the 'Startup' tab to see if it is in there. If it is there, you can deselect it to stop it from automatically running at startup. 

Step 6: Check the 'Services' tab on both Task Manager and MSConfig to see if it is running as a service in the background but most likely it isn't.

It could be a corrupted non responsive program, a virus, or a poor free third-party program that can't remove itself from the memory very well.

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