Now and then, I go to click something, anything, anywhere on screen and i get that default "BUNG" xylophone sound. I just now left the task manager up, processes prioritized by CPU activity, and video recorded the results.

So far, it's sporadic. Interestingly, I happended to keep clicking, and the problem didn't go away until i greatly lessened my click rate.

Here are the top Processes from the video, roughly in average order as they were shown, System Idle Process being the most CPU activty.

System Idle Process
explorer.exe
winlogon.exe
UnrealEd.exe
CLI.exe
firefox.exe

All of these, AFIAK, are legit, scanned by up to date ZoneAlarm Security Suite 6 antivirus, and SpySweeper.

Winlogon was the strange one of the bunch, as it is otherwise much further down the list.

I don't really know what to think. I'm not certain, but it might be after periods of inactivity, so it might be related to my screensaver setting of 2 minutes, Which defaults to the windows logo standard screensaver (after 3 minutes, monitor is powered down). But, I haven't noticed this kind of activity before, so I'm doubting it. This is from a system with zero'd out hard drives freshly installed with XP Pro SP2, then soon updated online, and with ZoneAlarm trial software and full subscription SpySweeper added quickly. I'm on a LAN (wired, wireless off on router) with a few lesser protected computers, none that I've noticed showing similar symptoms.

I reformatted my HD, as it'd been a few years, and it seemed that Norton Internet Security combined with SpySweeper were bogging the system down to much. (took a few minutes after boot before even firefox would finally appear on screen, if clicked after login)

I've just changed program defaults (in zonealarm) for winlogon.exe to ask for permission to any activity that ZA would ask for unknown programs.

Thinking about Getting windows defender. I'm trying to keep security tight, while not overtaxing my system of it's resources. Though I do miss the descriptions of programs found in Defender.

Anyone have any ideas, suggestions, or the like? I'm still trying to get more information to get more specific syptom's/results, and will post if I find anything significant.

Hmmm...

I've been reading up on security programs, and notices the surprising difference between PCMag's rating of SpySweeper vs the user rating.

Then I read posts such as "And get this--as it fires up these cpu-hogging episodes it steals focus for a second or two from the active window, so whatever you're typing goes into thin air!", and start to wonder.

I might unistall SpySweeper to see if the problem goes away. I'll post relevant info when I have it.

It seems to have been SpySweeper Version 5.0. I uninstalled it and installed 4.5, and everything seems to work fine now.

Frustrating that webroot doesn't allow for an easy way to get an old version of spysweeper. My having access to the file was a matter of luck.