We were poking around in Windows Task Manager today on what turned out to be an unrelated matter, but while there found a strange bird called "ACTIVATOR.EXE".

Didn't care for that name; it seems a little over the top, so searched Google. Not much luck there. Searching for "activator.exe is" narrowed it, but the references where for something else. One was for a component to a legitimate graphics program that I don't have and the other was for a worm or virus spelled differently: with a zero instead of an "O".

While that was going on I was running a search to try to find it on my system. Did find it and did find out that it was legitimate. In this case, "ACTIVATOR.EXE" is the little tray application for managing terminal sessions run by "SecureCRT". (A terminal emulation program that I appreciate very much.)

So I'm sticking this entry out for Google to find and hopefully be of help for the next person wondering about the mysterious stranger in the Task Manager list of running services.

I'm sure there must be other versions of Activator.exe. Send a comment here to add it to the list.

And to SecureCRT and all other publishers of mystery programs; as good as you are, please add a little something to your module names to identify yourself as the author/owner of the stuff you cause to run in my computer. You know like, "SCRTActivator.exe" or something like that. What ever you pick, please be consistent. Thanks.