File Purpose and Usage Questions

Question

I've often had to go search for files that I've found running on my computer, and I want to find out what they are, and if they're ok. I usually do a lot of googling to find the answer, but have found that there are many of those soul-sucking sell-me-a-driver-program-websites that key off of those key filenames. I think it would be a positive for the whole Internet, and Super User specifically, if we allowed a repository of those to build up here.

This question was closed as "Too Localized", when it obviously wasn't, since many users would have that file on their computer, and searches are done on it all the time.

I hope people will allow these questions to flourish (and vote to reopen that one).

Note: I do not want anyone just creating these questions out of thin air, just in the onesy-twosy fashion that they will naturally come about in, like any other category of question.

I have created the tag process-files for these types of questions.

Answer 1

Agree, trying to find information about these files can be pretty tricky at times. Reopened.

Answer 2

Same issue as with the computer virus questions: We don't want one (or more) questions per virus. In this case, it's possibly non-virus processes, but the problem's the same: It requires hundreds of thousands of very narrow topics to build a useful body of knowledge.

Rephrase as How can I find out what a process running on my machine does and where it's from? and live with results not specifically tailored to your use case. You need to do some thinking, but the topic will be actually useful to others.