IT help needed: What the hell is this...

[General Accident]

thing in my XP taskbar. I've never seen it before and it only appeared after I fitted a new formatted HDD to my old laptop and put a fresh install of XP Home on it. Task manager says its not an application, and when I click it it does change colour (light blue/dark blue etc) but nothing happens. It's freaking me out a bit.

Any help would be much appreciated.

[colmo]

It looks like a taskbar icon indicating wireless networking status. Have you tried right-clicking on it?

[Spoolio]

Wrong post, soz

[General Accident]

Right click does absolutely naff all .

[colmo]

At this point I'd check out the processes running (accessible from the Task Manager, Ctrl+Alt+Del to open) and see is there were any odd ones. Then I'd forcibly stop them and see which one caused the icon to disappear - if you know what it's called, you can tell if it is legitimate or not.

Unfortunately, there's no way of knowing what it'll be called. Maybe take a screenshot of running processes (can't remember if you hold down Alt, Shift or Ctrl while pressing Print Screen to capture only the active window) and post it. Sorry, I stopped using Windows almost two years ago, I'm getting rusty.

[mole2k]

Alt + print screen takes the active window shot.

[stebedford]

it looks like the Live update icon for symantec / norton either anti virus or system protect. Try getting your task manager up, closing all processes listed for your username one by one, each time you close 1 try clicking on the icon again. When it goes away you know the last 1 you ended was the process it related to

[chris_dono]

it is liveupdate

[mikeyscott]

Originally Posted by chris_dono

it is liveupdate

Yuck, horrible Symantec software..

I look after the SEP 11 at work and it's crap - Sophos all is forgiven...

[Southwell]

Originally Posted by mikeyscott

Sophos all is forgiven...

Shame about all the false positives Sophos throws up though.

[mikeyscott]

Originally Posted by Southwell

Shame about all the false positives Sophos throws up though.

Valid point as I do remember it toasting the citrix set-up at a previous employer..

Mind you SEP 11 is better than 9 which English Heritage still use and it's gone EOL... Mind you EH's set-up is piss poor to say the least. a 10 year old could hack into them

[glypo]

Shame about how crap Sophos is in general. Lets some of the nasties through, has really caused a headache at work recently.

http://www.anti-malware-test.com/?q=node/47

Figures say it all. Avast ftw in my eyes, regardless of the source it always seems to rank very well and it's free.

McAfee totally failing really makes me chuckle