Windows monitoring software?

[caspian915]

Hi all,

I know this is an Mac forum, but I'm temporarily stuck on a PC and the forum members here have always been helpful and knowledgeable.

So, all of the sudden I'm a paranoid user: I just bought an excellent condition PC (emachines with AMD) laptop from someone on craigslist. My previous laptop brokedown while waiting around for the cash to spend on a Mac (and no, I didn't even have enough cash at this point to get a used Mac). Windows Vista was already loaded onto the machine when I made the exchange with the guy. By all accounts he seemed normal.

I'm curious though: is it at all possible that he would be able to load a program on Vista that would send sensitive personal info about me to him remotely with me knowing? Is there a program like Lil' Snitch but for Windows that could detect this? And if there was a program loaded on here for that, what could I look for and where would I find it?

Lots of people will think I'm just paranoid but I know there are plenty of you out there who think/worry about this stuff and know my fears aren't completely out the question.

Thanks for any help.

sps

 

[brand]

You MUST perform a full format of the hard drive and then reinstall the operating system.

 

[edgew8]

I guess you could cntrl+alt+delete and see if the lil'snitch.exe is running in processes. Google all the processes running to see if any are spyware. otherwise, reformat, reformat, reformat!