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by Robert Hurlbut.
Original Post: So that is what they were -- AntiSpyware Alerts
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Last week I installed the new Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta on my laptop which runs Windows XP Pro SP2. Now, remember, I run as non-admin every day on my machine (don't you? and, if not, why not?!). I used Aaron Margosis' excellent script tool MakeMeAdmin to temporarily assign my low-privileged user to the Administrator group to install the software. After I ran it, it found nothing, except WinPCap for one of my security tools (Sergey Simakov had the same find for his security tools collection) .
After the install, I started seeing this weird thing happen over the last week. Ever so often when I opened an application, in particular, one of my security tools, I would see this box on the right hand side scroll by from off the bottom of the screen to past the top of the screen. It would move so fast, I couldn't see it. I thought, oh great, I finally got a virus! Today, for the first time in a long time, I logged in as my Administrator user and ran one of those tools and I finally saw the offending box -- it looked something like this. Aha -- its an AntiSpyware Alert from the Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta. But why, oh why, do I have to be an Administrator to see if I want to allow a particular piece of software to run or not?? I don't know if it is moving so fast because it already made the decision for me?!
This is very peculiar. It sounds and looks like a bug to me, but of course, it is beta software. It is another one of those oddities I have seen with software when you run as a non-administrator -- oddities I should never see in my applications.
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