# SBS 2003 closing executales



## gmauldin (Oct 11, 2010)

We have a SBS 2003 R2 running in virtual. The last few weeks it has been randomly closing .exe programs. It will be anywhere from 1 minute, but less than 10. It closes everything except for Internet Explorer. The clients connect to the server through ARTA (banking application) and their apps will close also. It closes notepad, Word, Excell,.....everything except IE. Nothing in the event viewer or any error logs. 
Any ideas?

**Executables if I could spell**


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## srhoades (May 15, 2003)

Did DEP get turned on?


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## gmauldin (Oct 11, 2010)

I don't think so, but I'll check again. If it is on, wouldn't it stop exe's from even starting? The programs close at very random intervals from 1 min to 10 mins.


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## srhoades (May 15, 2003)

With nothing in the logs about abnormal termination I would suspect malware.


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## gfne (Oct 28, 2010)

Sounds like malware/spyware. Even when you tried to open task manager it will close it not letting you do any troubleshooting.

Do ctrl-shift-esc and see if that closes. If so, copy the tasmgr.exe file from the c:\windows\system32 folder to the desktop. Then rename it to something like t.exe and run that. That will allow you to find whatever application that is running and close them.

As far as what to close... Once task manager has been opened, sort the list by user, and end all processes that are associated with a user and not system (except for explorer.exe.) Do it one at a time, and in between do ctrl-shift-esc (to open the offical task manager) to see if it closes. 

Once you've found the culprit, find the file, delete it, and do msconfig to uncheck it or go in the registry HTML->Software->Microsoft->Windows->CurrentVersion->Run using regedit and find the instance of the culprit, right click on it on the right side and click delete. Don't delete any of the folders on the left, make sure you actually right click on the culprit itself, and click delete.


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