Follow-Up screen saver never-idle interrupt problem

Recently posted that this problem had resolved itself, but it is back.

My screen saver sometimes, but not always, does not kick in.
Our previous discussion led to the conclusion something was making the
computer think it is not idle.
Lately I've noticed very often been typing when all of a sudden the
window I am in loses focus, and I end up having to click it to get
back. This sometimes just does not happen for a long time, and
sometimes it happens every 30 seconds or so, for hours.

Recently whenever I noticed this happen, I quickly hold down ALT and
hit tab - I don't release it, so I can see what's in the tasks...
well, there's this vanilla window icon and if I get to move to that
one quickly enough, it says "Downloading..." if I wait too long, still
holding down ALT, the icon remains there but TAB won't switch to it,
as if it is no longer there.

Here's a screen shot I managed to grab:

http://www.tallerworks.com/files/hidden_task.jpg

I'll list all the applications I can think of that I use regularly:

.. Firefox (don't get me started on all the bugs in this product, but I
still use it because it's better than having IE deliberately let
through ads, and I think I've ruled out FF as the culprit)
.. Outlook v 2002 with latest service pack
.. Spamihilator anti-spam (which, by the way, is terrific)
.. sometimes I have open the Sonicwall Global VPN Client, but not
logged into any network
.. AVG Anti-Malware 7.5 Network Edition
.. RealVNC running as service host mode
.. AnalogX Capture - a screen/window capture utility - no self-updating
or anything like that is even part of this program
.. APC PowerChute Personal Edition
.. MagicDisc Virtual drive
.. ActiveSync 4.5 beta (was the only way to resolve a major flaw in
every previous version

Nvidia and Gigabyte utilities.

At any one time I have tried removing these items from running
automatically but still encountered this problem

I think it is clear that something has some kind of self-updating
system that unfortunately is programmed less than perfectly. I
seriously doubt it is spyware, I am using a reliable anti-spyware
product. But I will do a manual scan anyway.

[One thing I noticed is that any time any Adobe product runs, it puts
ACROTRAY.EXE into memory and refuses to shut it down unless I
terminate it in task manager. I've removed it from automatically
starting up in Windows, but anytime I run Acrobat, it puts it back.
This is an enormous nuisance, as it is not absolutely necessary for it
to run in order for any of my Adobe products to work, but Adobe in
their arrogance refused to put any options to remove it. I had tried
renaming the file in the past, but many of the Adobe products refuse
to run if they don't see it. If it weren't Adobe, it would probably be
on the spyware community's hotlist.]

This is driving me absolutely nuts because not only does my screen
saver not kick in, which is going to force me to get into the habit of
shutting off my monitor all the time, but lately it has become a major
hassle when I'm composing an email or typing and IM, or even doing a
remote support session - losing focus means I'm suddenly typing and
nothing is happening.

I am at my wit's end with this, and I am going to end up starting to
uninstall software one-by-one which I really don't want to do because
this is a very new installation. This computer is only a couple of
weeks old.

ANY help at ALL, would be greatly appreciate. I've done some searching
on the internet but it's so hard to find adequate or even relevant
results.

 

Well, it seems I may have found the culprit.
I performed a fresh reboot, and immediately shut off Spamihilator. I
let the computer go idle and the screen saver kicked in. I then
started Spamihilator and left it idle, .....no screen saver. Then I
shut down spamihilator again, let it idle... screen saver kicked in.

Darn! And this is a fantastic product. Maybe I just have to adjust
some settings ...

Will FUP when I have some concrete results.

 

< snip long list, could have been shorter without comments >

If something is downloading, and its'a network connection, the odd once
or twice I have tried stuff like,

Outpost Firewall - 3 apps lists , denied, partly blocked, trusted.
Either remove all apps from the 3 lists or put everything in denied and
turn on prompt for access.

It also will log open apps, connections, ports as allowed - denied. The
results can be very useful.

If you don't want to swap to a different FW app, then maybe something
like -

command prompt - netstat , doesn't list the processes / files runnning
but lists remote hostnames, sites connected to.
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/netstat.mspx

LAN Monitor v1.3.4
http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptlanmon.asp

http://www.snapfiles.com/features/ed_usb_software.html
StartupList
CurrPorts - a GUI netstat + associated applications
SmartSniff - needs the skills to decode raw packet data

The often mentioned
ProcessExplorer, Filemonitor , Handle and many other good tools at,
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/default.mspx

That's the AVG or something else?

There are a number of posts in
http://groups.google.com/group/24hoursupport.helpdesk
listing several URLs for anti-spyware , hijackthis and other helpful
tools.

This appears to happen a lot, www.google.com for that one, it's popular.
It's also fairly certain to be in 24hshd as well
http://groups.google.com/group/24hoursupport.helpdesk


Me

 

I think I may very well have solved it.
I have been trying to get to spamihilator's site to see if any users
have reported this problem, but their site is down. It has been so for
a while.

Alas, I had an epiphany, one I hope is correct - The software is set
to check for updates once - per - day. However - since the site is
down, it seems it is checking once-per-30seconds.

I disabled checking for updates, and so far it looks good.
I'll post if I was wrong.