Hey folks does anyone know what is GoogleUpdate.exe - I have never seen it before in my processes, so I'm curious if this has to do with Google Chrome installation?
it's a component of Google Chrome. Zone Alarm was asking to give googleupdate.exe twice during the installation in the screen shots. It's also a reason why many with personal fire walls are having problems installing it.
Google toolbar has a similar process. It just checks for software updates. I like to just remove this from the registry startup programs. I don't want to waste resources unnecessarily checking for updates everyday.
If you have chrome installed, it starts with windows, you do not need to start the chrome browser. If you intend to use chrome then I do not think it would be a good idea to stop the process starting at start up as you may miss out on an important update when Google release a security fix. That being said, I do not like the process running all the time if I don't intend to use chrome much, So I will uninstall chrome until they release a more stable version. EDIT: After uninstalling Google Chrome, I rebooted my computer and noticed that GoogleUpdate.exe was still in the process list, I now am unsure if the Gmail notifier uses googleupdate.exe as well. I did not notice the process before installing Chrome, so I have now disabled the process using msconfig as well as with spybot S&D Cheers James
Its a hidden update process from Google. It checks for upgraded versions of Google Products autometically.