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I have an invisible mspaint.exe process (no open window) that runs apparently at startup on WINDOWS XP.

I tried the usual ways to kill it, but none of them worked.

1) Task Manager: the process disappears but returns immediately. 2) Command Prompt: if I do

taskkill -f /im mspaint.exe

I receive the SUCCESS message BUT the process mspaint remains, with the same PID.

If I specify the PID number, then I also get the SUCCESS message but the process mspaint.exe remains with a new PID.

3) Process Explorer: the kill command has no effect.

There is a parent svchost.exe process that I killed but still I could not get rid of child process mspaint.exe

Any advice is welcome.

Jeremy
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1 Answers1

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Try right-clicking on mspaint.exe in the processes tab in task manager and selecting "Kill Process Tree".

It seems like it could be a virus. I suggest downloading Malware Bytes (free) and doing a scan. http://www.malwarebytes.org

brettwhiteman
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  • The (first) suggestion did not work. However, using Task Manager, I first killed the svchost process associated to the user name and then separately I could kill mspaint.exe (without having him return). As explained before, I was unable to do that with Process Explorer. I currently do not have any explanation for that (and I still have to figure out what to do so that it does not launch again at startup). – Jeremy Jul 25 '13 at 22:40