More on Machnm1.exe
SIA Support Forum

From: Calvert Dayton
E-mail: support@siasoft.com
Date: 04 Jan 2005
Time: 12:25:13

Comments

Several SmaartLive 5 users have recently reported problems related to a file called machnm1.exe. The problems manifests themselves in the form of error messages on start-up of SmaartLive 5 complaining of being unable to find and/or communicate with machnm1.exe. These problems have proven non-fatal so far but it's possible it could prevent SmaartLive from running properly in some cases.

Machnm1.exe is a file we distribute with SmaartLive that is called on start-up to help the program figure out what type of machine it's running on. So we had been recommending a reinstallation of SmaartLive as a corrective action. I received some new information today though, that leads me to believe these problems may stem from some bad or missing Windows components rather than Smaart's Machnm1 utility.

See the Microsoft Knowlege Base article below for more information and corrective actions:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q324767/

If replacing the files detailed in the Microsoft KB article does fix the problem, it's still interesting that a minor rash of similar problems have been popping up all of a sudden in places where we never had problems before. I've had some suspicions that either the XP Service Pack 2 or possibly a new virus, trojan or spyware agent might be stomping on Machnm1.exe for some reason. But if bad or missing Windows components were the source instead, any of those possibilities would immediately become more plausible.

So if you have recently started seeing error messages referencing machnm1.exe and you haven't recently installed XP SP2 (or perhaps even if you have), I'm thinking a virus and spyware scan might be very much in order. Spybot and Ad-Aware are the two most popular spyware/adware cleaners. Both are free for personal use and I usually run them both myself, just for the sake of throughness. If you need a good freeware antivirus utility, the best one I know of is AntiVir. You can just Google the program names for download sources.