Press CTRL+ALT+DEL and click on the “Processes” tab in the window that appears (Windows XP Pro users, hit the “Task Manager” button and then look for “Processes”). This will show you a list of all the programs that are running invisibly on your computer, quietly doing work in the background. Many of these processes are legitimate — they’re doing things like scanning for viruses, keeping you logged into desktop applications, and other such things. On the other hand, some of them could be damaging your computer and spying on your activity.
Seeing strange processes appear in this list often means that your computer is infected with spyware, adware, or some kind of virus. The problem is, how you are you supposed to know which programs are malicious and which are legit? They’ve all got equally cryptic names.
Well, you don’t have to know, because tasklist.org does. Tasklist.org maintains a list of known processes that appear in Windows’ task list, and gives you a quick description of their purpose. By taking names from Windows’ process list and looking them up on tasklist.org, you’ll be able to quickly ascertain whether or not your computer is infected. If you spot a malicious process in your task list, it’s time to run your anti-virus software, along with a program like Ad-Aware, which is specially designed to hunt down spyware.
Link via Lifehacker.
