AmeCSAex

Hi, SanctuarySpa, and welcome to A2K.

That's a new one on me. If you could provide the full path and file name, that might be helpful. Its not a file with which I'm familiar, and I wasn't able to find out much about it, but mostly that just means I'm not familiar with it and there isn't much info about that I was able to find. Of the little I did find, I didn't find anything that would lead me to suspect it might be a nasty, so that may be good news.

You might wanna navigate to the folder containin' that file, find the file, right-click on it, and examine its properties; you may be able to determine the file's author (Microsoft or a 3rd-Party vendor, for instance), then chase down more info on the vendor's website.

Another thing you might wanna try would be to do a deep search for it, and note the location of every instance found. To perform a deep search (XP - instructions for other Win versions are quite similar, though), do the followin':

1) Enable Explorer to view all files. Open "My Computer", click "Tools", select "Folder Options", and click the "View" tab. Place a check mark in the following boxes:

"Display the contents of system folders"
"Display full path in address bar"

Under "Hidden Files and folders" select the "Show hidden files and folders" button

Uncheck the following boxes:

"Hide extensions for known file types"
"Hide protected operating system files" (Recommended)"
Click "Yes" to confirm, Click "Apply", then click "OK" . Close the folder.

2) Enable "Search to search all files and folders. Click Start>Search, under "What do you want to search for?" select "All files and folders", then select "More advanced options, and make sure the 1st 3 boxes, "Search ssystem folders", "Search hidden files and folders", and "Search subfolders" are checked.

3) In the "All or part of the file name:" dialog box, type the file name.

4) Be sure "Look in:" is set for your root drive (your main drive, the one on which Windows resides - usually "C")

5) Click "Search" and see what turns up - if nothin' turns up, repeat the search, but this time with the filename entered into the "A word or phrase in the file" dialog box.

If you still can't figure out what it is, you might wanna try re-namin' it to somethin' like "!.(filename).what", run your system for a while, and see if anything unpleasant or otherwise unexpected happens. If problems do occur, simply revert the filename. If things seem fine after a few days of normal operation, its most likely perfectly safe to delete the renamed file.

If you are not experiencin' symptoms that would lead you to suspect your machine might be infected with a virus, worm, trojan, or other yuckware, and your Windows, browser, and antivirus are properly configured and up to date, its prolly nothin' to worry about.

Finally, For general protection against yuckware, I highly recommend the followin' free software - with the caveat you should read the software's relevant documentation to learn how to properly configure, update, and deploy it, of course:

LavaSoft's Ad-Aware SE

PepiMK's Spybot Search & Destroy

Javacool Software's SpywareBlaster

Microsoft's Microsoft Windows Antispyware

Just holler here on this thread if you have any questions. Good luck.

Think I got it figured out - it appears to be related to a DSL interface if its the file I think it is. If the HJT entry is "O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [AME_CSA] rundll32 amecsa.cpl,RUN_DLL", it starts the control panel applet for a NetComm 1200 USB ADSL Modem. Prolly not necessary at startup, but prolly not worth worrylm' too much about.