This maybe a little off topic but I'm hoping someone on here can help. First off I'm not talking about ad-ware or spy-ware. I'm trying to figure out how someone can spy on a computer workstation and see what programs are running, what times you are doing stuff, etc, etc. I'm not sure if there is a background program running or not. Is it possible to do this in Windows XP, without aftermarket software? If not how can you tell if there is software running? This isn't something that is being done live, it's being done after hours when everyone is gone. Any help is much appreciated. Thanks.

It would require a third party application. Some of them will show up easily, in your process list. Others (more expensive ones) are basically impossible to detect.

Windows keeps logs with some if not all of the information you mentioned. Probably someone like a system administrator would know better how you can access them and what reports can be generated. If fact they might be able to generated a report to tell you who and what is being accessed after hours. lotussama is right if it's a 3rd party program, they are difficult to detect although sometimes but sometimes something like SpyBot will find them. You could always install one of these programs and they will let you know what's going on

Cool, thanks for the help! I already went into the administrator tools and looked at the security setting and there is something called auditing (which was turned off) could that be something someone could use?
I'm going to try installing spybot on Monday.

You should turn it on and see what you get. If this is a business and I had security concerns, I would at least look into contracting with a System Administrator or Security person. Who ever would do be capable of doing what you're concerned with would have to be very compute literate. There also should be logs on all the computers that would tell you who logged in and at what time. Is this you're business or are you concerned you're boss is monitoring what you're doing? If the latter, assume they are.

It's not my business, I'm the full time IT tech for the company. But I have a suspicion that the owner brings in an outside firm to check the computers. And this is an area that I don't have really any experience in, so I was really wanting to figure out how and what they were doing. The owner is kinda of a penny pincher too, so I was pretty much ruling out the expensive software, but I could be wrong. The help that you all have given me so far will definitly give me a direction to go in, anyway. Thanks again.

I know that businesses can generate reports on what users are doing and when they are doing it. One of the IT people where I work told me they could. I didn't ask for details because obviously this would be suspicious. Your best bet would be to start researching the OS you're using to find out what kind of reports you can run and how to do it. Of course if he has someone monitoring stuff, they'll likely know what you're doing. Kind of Spy Versus Spy from Mad Magazine