In this case, Visual Studio is using it as part of a developmental framework...same as Visual Studio no doubt installed the Microsoft .NET Framework package which runs its own services. This is a common thing for it to be installed for development, and IIs or Apache shouldn't normally be run on a Client machine - they were designed for use as a server, and servers don't browse the web.
Steve, Thanks for your info. That makes a lot of sense--I definitely noticed a lot of "Delivery notification: delivery has failed" messages in my mail box, which I knew nothing about. I will definitely try symantec's solution. Could you explain what you mean by "...have your ISP shut off if its not taken care of"? Call my cable company (I use cable modem and tell them to shut off some SMTP service on my account? Or disable some function in my Outlook options? Thanks again. tc
Thanks Jerry for your reply. I use the above 2 programs regularly. but somehow they fail to clean up that malicious process.
1) make sure that you get updates in both of those programs since the signatures for the various spyware change regularly 2) maybe a virus, not spyware as was mentioned in another post - make sure that the virus definitions in your anti-virus software are up to date. 3) Locate the files on your hard drive, right click on them and select Properties and see if that gives a better clue as to what they are
word. great advice.. thx for all the info. IIs hung during uninstall. had to restore from clean HD image to get rid of the $#*!. oh well. -b