problems with Norton Firewall

[hes]

Recently, I have noticed my Norton Firewall and/or Antivirus just disappearing from the Systray automatically. Got suspicious for some sort of malware. So, I went into my firewall settings and enabled "Program Launch Monitoring". Now, I am getting repeated warnings that "svchost.exe" is trying to launch "msmsgs.exe". Neither my antivirus nor my SpyBot picks-up any threats, but something just seems funky.

I am running Win XP Home. Is it just the crappy Norton software? Should I switch to another program?

Many thanks in advance for any help. Please only reply if you know what you are talking about -- "black pearls of wisdom" are the worst ;-)

Software -> Security

-Schadenfroh

 

[mechBgon]

As fact-finding steps, you might try some rootkit-detection tools and additional browser-based antivirus scanners. I listed some on this page (the rootkit scanners are down the page a couple boxes). You might also consider doing a System Restore back to before this started happening, if possible.