Unknown windows application running occasionally

Recently, an unknown program has started running pretty regularly. It creates a window, shifts focus away from whatever I'm doing, runs for less than a second, and everything goes back to normal. The window has no title, and it's too brief to go look it up in the task manager.

As far as I can tell, it's not accessing the network, as Sygate's firewall logs are not picking it up.

Avast's antivirus didn't pick it up, either.

Any idea how I could go about figuring out what's going on? Is there a way to configure one of the windows loggers to track all programs that run?

Thanks in advance!

 

If the event logs don't give you enough information, take a look at some of the free utilities at http://www.sysinternals.com/ProcessesAndThreadsUtilities.html .

All of them allow logging so you can capture whatever is running for that brief time.

 

elwaoro--Outside chance you might find it if, just after this happens, you click on History in the IE toolbar and see what internet sites have been visited . This assumes that it is an internet site rather than a Windows program.

 

If it's active, it needs a trigger which "in theory" should show in a HiJackThis log.

Download and install HiJackThis

Run the scan, and then copy/paste the created log back here.

And, to test Jim's theory, does the window appear when you aren't on the net? Just because the firewall doesn't catch it, doesn't mean that isn't the source.