HPBPRO.exe

Problem: A user reported serious response time problems on her machine while trying to open attachments in Outlook and while accessing various internet links within Internet Explorer. It's still not clear what was really causing the problem, but Filemon showed very heavy file activity from HPBPRO.exe. It's apparently part of the HP Toolbox product, which is non-essential to the operation of the HP printers. Lots of hits on the internet indicated that the program was causing performance problems. And, there was a lot of discussion about how to remove HPBPRO, but it was not clear which was the best way (It's not an item in Add/Remove Programs). Simply renaming the file in the Windows\System32 directory didn't completely stop related file activity. There was still an SVCHOST task trying to execute it.

Solution: I navigated to C:\Program Files\Hewlett Packard\Tools and found an Uninstall program. After I ran this, all file activity related to HPBPRO.exe stopped. All is well so far. If we have any fallout from this, I'll update the post....