Asking about Gmer again :)

[Amethyst]

I ran GMER on my 2 XP SP3 computers. (I was just being a bit paranoid because I thought an unusual amount of traffic had gone through both machines today and I couldn't think of a reasonable explanation for it.) Nothing malicious found, but there were items. I had run a scan a while back, and nothing had changed from that one. On the laptop, they were all related to my firewall, on the desktop, other little things. No notice about rootkits. I saved the logs.

Instead of closing the GMER window with the red x in the upper right hand corner this time, I clicked on the OK button to close the window on both machines.

So, please forgive my dumb question, but clicking on that OK wouldn't have done anything, would it have? As in causing GMER to take any kind of action?

The reason I am asking is because task manager wouldn't work on either computer afterward, and anything else was sluggish. I tried to reboot both of them, and I ended up having to hard boot both of them. Now both are running, things seem OK.

GMER wouldn't have removed anything in that list of processes, would it have, if I clicked on the OK , the one beside the cancel button? What would I see if it were about to remove something?

I'm looking at the screen shot here:

http://www.gmer.net/

(I wouldn't have gone ahead and done anything with the program without consulting an expert, I just wanted it to report.)

[AdvancedSetup]

No nothing wrong. Just due to the nature of the program and what and how it scan can sometimes lock the system up.

Just reboot and you should be just fine.

[Amethyst]

Thanks Ron!

[noknojon]

Hi -

It just adds to what AdvancedSetup usualy states in most of these cases (GMER - Combo Fix -etc) that we should always use the utmost care with these programs that can cure a computer , but also - X - your Operating System without using due care -

[Amethyst]

I know how powerful these tools are and I have a healthy respect for them. I'm petrified of Combofix, would never run it unless I was desperate and someone was helping me with it.

I actually won't run anything that 'auto cleans', nor would I allow a cleanup unless I verify first that it is really needed.

I liked the Kaspersky online scanner for a second opinion because it was 'report only', but it looks like that scanner isn't available anymore. I haven't been able to get Bitdefender to work for a long time, but it used to be good. Except for some reason, once even after I set it to report only, it set itself to autoclean and I lost a benign file due to a false positive. Fortunately, I had another copy on another drive.

I know enough to fix some problems, and also enough to get into some serious trouble.

I think I worry overmuch sometimes and I just like to check things, see what's running under the hood, and I sure don't want to be tying up the malware fighter forums needlessly.