On Jan 29, 3:37*pm, "Eisboch" wrote:
How can I find out what program(s) are running "in the background" so to
speak?
Reason I ask is that I routinely put this thing in "standby" mode when I am
not using it and it normally shuts down the display, hard drive and cooling
fans until I hit the "enter" key when I want to use it again and then it
springs back to life.

Every once in a while though, it shuts down normally to "standby", but then
starts up again by itself. *The only way to stop this is to completely go
through a "turn off" cycle and then restart again. *After that, it's good
for another week or so until it begins to start up by itself again.

I suspect a program is running in the background, because when I do a
complete shutdown, I see a brief window indicating that something is
shutting down, before the computer goes through it's normal "shutting
windows down" cycle.

OS is Windows XP SP2.

Hope this question makes sense. *I'd like to open something to see what is
running.

Eisboch

Open a task manager and look at the programs listed there. [ctl] [alt]
[del].