Reply #35: The little yellow triangle with ! icon. [View All]

[dancing kali]

That occasionally shows up on my computer at work which is running the latest version of XP. I *think* it signals that there are updates available to be installed on the computer from Microsoft. So if you click on it and it gives you a message to download and install the latest Windows patches and updates that's all that it is. The icon will go away until the next time there are updates. You should be able to get rid of the auto update by editing your start up (someone else posted the instructions for this somewhere above this post), or, right clicking on the icon might give you a menu that gives you the option to turn it off. If you turn the auto update off, you will occasionally have to go and check for any updates if you wish to keep your programs updated. I'm not on a computer with XP at the moment.

It could also be the icon that indicates that you have your sound muted.

I could also be completely wrong about both of these.

I run Spybot Search & Destroy (with TeaTimer), SpywareBlaster (which blocks spyware before it gets in), and AdAware. I highly recommend these to everyone. I briefly considered HijackThis but I'm not enough of a geek to really want to play with it (which is also why I'm not running Linux).

I also run something called Registry First Aid... I had a problem with Norton because of a corrupted file, which led to a dirty uninstall, which led to not being able to reinstall a completely legal copy of Norton Utilities and anti-virus. With this program I was able to find the registry entries and remove them and then reinstall Norton. It's not a freeware program, but it does have a demo version that will only allow a small number of changes to be made at one time (the full version has no restriction to the number of changes at once). It's pretty easy to use, and will make a backup for restoration purposes. Please keep in mind that changing things indiscriminately in the registry could be hazardous to your computer... be careful and make backups before doing any major changes.

A word about Norton... I found that it occasionally wouldn't "play nicely" with other resident programs that I was running and would cause all sorts of havoc and crashes. Removing Norton cleanly (and permanently) fixed that problem. However, I have no real proof that Norton was to blame and when it was working I was happy with it. I now run McAfee as my anti-virus and no problems.

Good luck.