I'm not sure if I have a malware infection on my laptop or not and I'm trying to work out what's going on. Should the Malicious Software Removal Tool be constantly requesting internet access, like a couple of times every half hour or so? I thought it was sort of a run once type of app. This is a legit copy of Windows. I bought the lappie back in October just before the Win8.1 update came out which I promptly upgraded to. But as I'm running Comodo Firewall I see MRT.exe requesting internet access all the time. The Comodo popup shows it is the MRT.exe executable in the System32 folder. I've searched the drive and this is the only file with that name. Thing is when Comodo alerts me of this there is no MRT.exe showing in Task Manager. When I run MSRT manually it does show up in Task Manager. I've done a whois on the IP addresses it's trying to connect to and they seem legit Redmond IP's. Anyone have some thoughts on this? I'm about to install Win8.1.1 pro anyway. But it would be good to know WTH is going on here.
That would be the simple answer. But I can't work out why it's trying to access the internet so much on my laptop when it's not on my desktop. In fact I set an "Allow and log" rule on the desktop this morning in Comodo. I just checked and it hasn't tried to connect all afternoon. However the file hashes match on both computers so I'm probably just being over-cautious. Still, why doesn't it show in Task Manager when it's requesting internet access?