What is the Program program showing up in Windows 8 Task Manager Startup tab?

Anonymous
2013-01-08T19:16:06+00:00

I just purchased a new HP desktop.  Windows 8 is installed.  I've had it for about three weeks.  I haven't installed much so far...printer drivers, Acrobat Reader, Google Chrome, VLC Media Player, Open Office, and Quicken 2012 are all I can think of.

About two weeks ago I noticed that in the Startup tab of Task Manager there is an application listed named "Program."  The publisher column is blank.  The Status column shows "Enabled."  The Startup impact column shows "Not measured."  When I right click on the listing I have the options to "Disable" and "Search online"; the "Properties" and "Open file location" options are grayed out.  So, I disabled the "Program" program.  Since then I've not noticed any lack of functionality, but Norton Internet Security did crash once; otherwise I seem to have a stable system and everything seems to work.

Still, I want to know what this "Program" program is.  I've searched my system to the best of my ability using all utilities that came installed.  I've also searched the Registry using regedit; nothing.  Finally, today, I downloaded Sysinternals' (a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation) Autoruns.  Nothing again.

I'd appreciate any help to track this down.  What is it?  And, if I don't need it how can I get rid of it?  Thanks!

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Performance and system failures

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-01-25T19:53:45+00:00

    Hey all, I signed up just to throw in my $.02

    LOTS of replies, and I know some things worked for some, but not for others.

    I had the same phantom "Program" issue caused by a botched uninstall of WinZip.

    Enabling the Command Line in Task manager allowed me to find the name of the 3 .exe files that had floating registry remnants.

    I then ran regedit.exe as Administrator. Starting with the first filename, I went to Edit > Find... then entered the name exactly as it appeared in Task Manager.

    I found about 7 different locations with that name associated with it. They were all safe to delete because I wanted ALL files wiped from my system. After deleting each one, I went to Edit > Find Next  until the registry could no longer find any results. Using Find... one of the locations was buried deep in a "Run" folder, although I do not recall the exact path; use the Find function and you will eventually kill them all.

    Restart to double check- no mo phantom program in Start Up.

    Hope this helps! Happy hunting!

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-09-03T19:33:38+00:00

    i never was using windows 7... windows 8.1 originally, updated to 10.... and everything was listed by name in startup.....

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-09-03T19:32:54+00:00

    weird... this issue has been known by everyone and yet, each person gets a different reason....

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-09-03T19:32:00+00:00

    idk what mines was caused by, nothing on google helped me at finding it and no one in computer support tech are helping out...

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  5. Anonymous
    2015-09-02T04:36:48+00:00

    mine was caused by onenote.

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