This weekend, I was on my Windows 7 notebook and noticed a new Firefox beta was available. So of course I started the upgrade, but was stopped by an alert for firefox.exe continuing to run in the background. This was after I had closed my Firefox windows, and I had actually run into this problem a couple of times before. I decided to figure out what was preventing firefox.exe from properly shutting down. Since the first step of troubleshooting in the modern world is “Google”, that is where I went. And I found this slightly alarming article. I started up Wireshark to confirm my suspicions, and sure enough that little firefox.exe process is connecting to some IP address for a DSL provider in the Philippines and reporting on my Google searches, active windows, etc. WTF. So I kill the wifi adapter and start digging through services and start up items to try track it down. After a lot of trial and error and many reboots, I was able to narrow it down to a suspicious file in my %APPDATA% directory (named svchost.exe and with properties saying that is was Internet Explorer) that was being run at startup.
To make a long story short, I am going back to a Windows-free home computing experience. I’m writing this from the Ubuntu desktop and installing Mint on a new SSD that I picked up at Fry’s over the weekend. That was actually my first trip to Fry’s, and it lived up to the hype of being nerdvana. After exactly one boot, Mint seems cool, and the SSD seems fast, though it’s limited by the older SATA2 interface in my laptop. I’ll try to write a follow up after I get a chance to kick the tires on Mint a little.
