What is wowexec.exe?

[hvn_nbr_2]

I'm running Windows XP Professional, and I have this file wowexec.exe in directory \Windows\system32.

Here's how I discovered it and why I'm suspicious of it:

I played the video that is linked to by this thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2648766

Immediately afterward, Firefox wouldn't do anything, wouldn't even do a back-arrow to the previous page. It just sat there with the hourglass on. Other Firefox windows behaved the same way.

I brought up Task Manager and found this unfamiliar (to me) program in the processes list. It stood out because the name was indented one space, unlike all the other process names.

Internet Explorer started and ran okay.

I closed all Firefox windows and then I tried to start a new Firefox window both from a desktop shortcut and from the start menu. In both cases, nothing seemed to happen--no new process in the tray at the bottom of the screen, no new process in the Task Manager window.

I rebooted and was then able to run Firefox okay, and the mysterious wowexec.exe isn't in the Task Manager process list.

I've never seen Firefox act that way before and I don't remember ever seeing that process wowexec.exe.

Just the name sounds suspicious to me, unless WOW is an acronym for something. It just sounds like some virus hacker's idea of a cool joke.

[RoyGBiv]

1. Windows on Windows ...

WOW. It's started by the NTVDM every time you run a 16 bit application in a 32 bit environment, i.e. you run something written for Windows prior to it supporting 32 bit.

It's harmless by itself, but if it crashes, it'll cause other things to crash, such as the app you were running, and if the 16 bit app itself is a problem, this could indicate it is running.

Are you aware of an 16 bit apps running on your machine?

As for Firefox, what version are you running? For some bizarre reason, I've had similar issues with embedded video in pages since installing 1.5. Version 1.08 is still considered the most stable version of FF, and I didn't have those issues with that version. It's rare enough it doesn't bother me. The real source of the problem is the plugin that streams the video or the site itself having issues that cause the browser to get quirky while it's trying to load/render the video stream.

[hvn_nbr_2]

2. Thanks for your help.

I almost certainly was running at least one old 16-bit app. One was something that is very old, probably originally written for Windows 3.X. Another was a Visual Basic app that I created from a VB so old that you installed it from floppy. I didn't suspect either of those apps because they've been stable for years and also they'd run without any problems in this instance and had just been sitting there open for quite awhile but doing nothing. However, interestingly I just restarted both them and did a little bit with them, but wowexec.exe still doesn't appear in my process list.

I'm still running Firefox 1.0.7. There was a quirky thing while running that video. It started okay, then the video disappeared for awhile while the audio continued to play, then the video came back on. I often have problems with online videos but usually it's that they just won't play at all or occasionally they play only the sound.

[RoyGBiv]

3. What version of Media Player?

You might try upgrading/reinstalling media player and see if that helps. It is usually the base culprit in these situations if the website itself isn't completely broken.

I went to the link and loaded it just fine on a Linux system, so I don't think the website is the issue in this case.

[hvn_nbr_2]

4. Holiday weekend -- sorry to be so slow to respond

I'm not sure of my Media Player version. (It's at home and I'm at work now.) In fact, I'm not even sure if Media Player is what I use to play that kind of file. Every kind of media player (Windows Media Player, Real Player, ITunes, WinAmp, and several others) all want to take over everything on your computer when you install them, and some of them don't even tell you that they're doing so, so whichever one I installed most recently probably is the culprit. I'll have to check when I get home.

[RoyGBiv]

5. No worries ...

I wasn't around much either.

FWIW, I remembered something the other day while messing with my daughter's computer.

For reasons I never bothered to discover, whenever I'd stream a .wmv or .asf video via an embedded media player (which is what normally streams these things even if you have some other app installed), if I moved the page on which the video displayed, or if I momentarily covered it with another window, the video seemed to disappear. It's not really disappearing, but an explanation of what is happening is too technical and really beside the point since I don't know how to prevent this. To fix it, I'd scroll the page with my mouse wheel up and down just a little, back and forth a few times with the video always in the viewable window, and it would reappear.

That may be what's happening in some of your cases.

As for the original problem, it could be a number of things, possibly the version of media player you have, but it could also be a bug in Firefox that only presents itself when certain conditions are present. As noted, I had no trouble playing it, on Linux no less, so it may be a strange set of circumstances difficult to predict.