"D.Duck" wrote in message
...

"Eisboch" wrote in message
...
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 Windows Task Manager (ctrl-alt-del) and open the Processes tab.


......and prepare to be confused. You won't recognize many of the processes,
so you'll need to continue researching & asking questions. Shutting down
some of them can make you cry.