Other people are logged onto this computer. Shutting down Windows might cause them to lose data.I'm the only person who uses this machine, and no other computers in the home are even on right now.
Time, I suspect, for a complete clean re-install. Of everything. Paranoia is our friend. See you tomorrow.
11 comments:
That happened to me too!
Rockwell - Somebody's Watching Me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD21JDMp86c&feature=PlayList&p=BA67FB577972A5B7&index=0&playnext=1
No worries, it was just ME, and the CIA, martians and a couple of odd friends.
Are you on wireless? I get those messages occasionally and my Son checks out my computer. Nothing evil shows up so it could just be a glitch. I'm techy-clueless but that was my first thought in reading your post. Best wishes with the problem.
Lonni
Windows is easily confused. Normally, this happens when you have user account switching turned on, and one of the accounts is logged in and you have switched to another account. However, if you only have one account, then it's probably just some windows glitch (although, in XP and I think Vista as well, there is always an administrator account, as well as the account you set up at install time, so there is always two.....not sure about Windows 7). But reformatting and reinstalling every so often is always a good idea with Windows.
Joseph, do a Google search for that sentence, "Other people are logged onto this computer." You will find that most of the time there is nothing to fear. See for instance the second hit on Google for the above-mentioned search: the blog called jakeludington.com has a reply that appears pretty reliable to me (though I am not an IT dude).
In response to the commenter Gus, I think Joseph's On Win 7. Not because I'm a spy or a hacker, but because I've been reading this blog for a long time and I remember a post from Joseph about Win 7 being a very very good operating system. Which it is.
Conflicts of Interest Disclosure: I live in the Puget Sound area but have zero connection to MS other than having friends who work there; however I am sick and tired of the endless MS bashing and mindless Apple worship.
Mindless bashing? I've been using Microsoft OS's since DOS 6.21 and Windows 7 is the fist time they got it right though it is a resource hog.
The message is almost certainly a bug, because Windows is essentially a bug, yes?
I use both a Mac and a PC every day, sometimes with a hand on either keyboard, sometimes going back and forth, in true Rick Wakeman style. I'm reasonably familiar with both operating systems and have worked at jobs using both of them.
No one asked, but going from the PC to the Mac is like traveling 100 years forward in time. It's unbelievable how much better the Mac is.
There. I've said it.
I hasten to say I've used and continue to use some awesome PC software. And Macs are anything but perfect.
But changing machines really is like moving back and forth through time. All I ever do s tweak the PC. It almost never occurs to me to tweak the Mac. The only area where I consistently prefer PC's over Macs is in the PC's freer use of the keyboard and keyboard shortcuts. I am a lousy mouser and prefer pushing buttons.
I tell you what--Bill Gates damn well better save the people of Africa. Otherwise, his karma is fried for all the execrable software he's foisted on us. May the error messages haunt his dreams.
Here is an interesting answer from PC Pitstop Forum:
Ordinarily when I see that message it means just that -- A different account is still logged on.
For example, if user1 is logged on, then user2 gets on the computer and go to Log Off... Switch User, and logs onto their User2 account, they logged onto their account, while keeping user1's account still open. Or it could be the administrator, or possibly guest account that is still logged in.
If there is a 'hacker' on your computer it's a possibility they may have installed a VNC server on your computer...
Right click on your task bar on the bottom of the screen and choose Task Manager -- go to the processes tab and look for something called WinVNC.exe if you see anything like that then stop the process and note it on here so we can help you further.
My guess is that the first thing I mentioned is your answer.
On a side note, I would go into User Account, and choose to change the way a user logs on/off the computer and turn off fast user switching.
Then go right click on My Computer > Choose: Properties > Choose the Remote tab > Uncheck the box that says "Allow remote assistance..." and "Allow users to connect..."
To be honest, though I don't think there is much for you to worry about.
Link
I programmed my first computer in 1968 and was burned by Apple in the Apple II/Mac transition. I hate Apple. I will never have anything good to say about them (well, uh, except for my ipod), and I find their advertisements and fanboys beyond annoying. I've never been very concerned about spurious messages from OS since things do happen but with well-written code problems are usually solved by a reboot instead of reinstall. So Joe, hats off to you for taking the time to reinstall, though I hate the time I spend reinstalling hundreds of applications (and no I've never found any of those app movers that really worked).
Perry, you're always welcome around here, but I'm with Bob when it comes to the Mac fanboys. They remind me of -- well, of your average Obot circa June, 2008.
I've owned and used MS-based PCs -- online, mind you -- since 1983. In that time, I've been hit by *one* virus, a drive-by infection thanks to a Firefox exploit that, ironically enough, took advantage of a security hole in Apple's Quicktime codec. (Which isn't to say I've not had to get rid of a slew of them, courtesy of friends borrowing my computer.)
Similarly, I've used my primary day-to-day machine since early 2003. During that nearly 7-year span, I've reinstalled Windows *once* -- again, thanks to that Firefox/Quicktime bug. It still runs relatively snappily, given it's a mid-level P4 with 1.5 Gb of RAM. And it's not as if this is a locked-down machine with a handful of carefully chosen apps; instead, I'm adding and removing programs all the time. I used it for a lot of video manipulation and encoding, photo and graphic processing, some audio work, and web development -- not to mention various code loaded in support of one client or another. (At the moment I have some odd VPN software, a full-blown inventory management system -- complete with a standalone SQL database engine -- more MS-created Visual Whatever development environment pieces than I care to remember, a Business Process Management Notation Process Modeler, a video tutorial development suite, and an API documentation generator, all thanks to one client or another.)
I've had to used Macs extensively at various jobs -- I even once owned a newspaper publisher that was a Mac-only shop. And, frankly, I hated them; they were horribly unstable, user-unfriendly (why on Earth should I have to tell a computer how much RAM to use?), and non-intuitive. Admittedly, they were also OS 9 -- and my experience with Macs since Apple dumped classic MacOS in favor of UN!X has been much more positive.
Even so, the fact that Macs are finally nearly as usable as PCs -- if not, alas, anywhere near as affordable -- shouldn't detract from my point that constant tweaking, periodic reinstalls, and security breaches are inevitable consequences of running Windows.
Duh. That should have read "are *NOT* inevitable consequences of running Windows." Soy doofus.
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