By every grain of salt in the Dead Sea. I tried to Google this thing and all I could find out is that it's affiliated with AOhell. I don't know why it's on this PC but I can't get rid of it. It starts itself up shortly after I manually remove it from my task manager. I don't know if it's the same thing that's been causing my IE windows to duplicate themselves. I've tried Spybot, and it doesn't work... though maybe it's because EVERY TIME I try to tell it to run on reboot, people close it before it finishes and all sorts of programs already run themselves on startup.

I don't usually have to deal with this kind of nonsense, since on my laptop I'm smart, I don't download shareware, I'm careful about the sites I visit, and my computer requires my permission to run scripts or save cookies. My laptop is the equivalent of a good girl who would never have unprotected sex without the pill, a condom, AND a diaphragm, and this PC is the equivalent of somebody who's had sex with every whore, drug addict, and filthy hobo in New York City. Is there a solution, other than confiscating the computer and never allowing my family to use one ever again?
Thank you and even if you can't help me, I did need to vent a little bit. Can you blame me?

Start the PC up in Safe Mode (usually prees F8 when it is booting up) and then do a search for the file and delete all instances of it...

If that doesn't work... try something else... [img]smile.gif[/img]

goto start then run and type msconfig
try to find that program and uncheck it.

that should render it obsolete

ROTFL at your description! [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]

Now, for your problem...

First, next time you need to run Spybot, reboot the machine yourself and let it finish. Then you can be sure that it's working.

Second, the safe mode method listed here is probably a good bet.

Third, MSConfig will work, depending on your Windows version (which you conveniently hid on me in disappearing electrons). It doesn't exist at Win2k, and I believe it's gone at XP as well.

Apparently, it's an AOL Internet Control thingie, and since you've got it enabled, it keeps going. It's apparently in C:\Windows\System32\spcauth.exe (assuming a Win2k or higher system); you might try copying something else to that location and name to prevent AOL from bringing it back.

Oh, and the usual comments about AOL apply, so I'll leave them out of it for now [img]smile.gif[/img]

So do the usual comments on Windows XP and ME... I've noticed several threads with WinXP problems, and my perpetual advice to people with Windows XP problems still remains the same: Throw it out the window and get yourself Windows 95.
I'll try this all tonight, everyone. Thanks for your help, and I'll keep you posted.

I have winxp pro and msconfig works...hm...wait...maybe its just for pro? illumina, what ver of winxp do u have? home or pro? (i think that might make a difference, considering its microsoft we are talking about XD). Try to search for the file (windows key and F at the same time), then goto the location, delete it.easy. or if it says acess denied, then try to uncheck some attributes from the properties of the file. then create a dummy file (a blank text file with the same name) and make it read only [img]tongue.gif[/img] . I love doing this to some very annoying spy programs XD