What Is wssetup.exe?

Wssetup.exe sounds like the setup program for an application with the initials W.S. Have you installed anything with these initials lately?

My guess is that wssetup.exe is benign, but of course we can’t know for sure. While you googled the file name, there’s actually no guarantee that this file is the same as the one whose information you found online. Software companies aren’t required to give program files unique names, and neither are malware developers, for that matter. Anyone can name a file how they like.

So, it sounds like you need to do a little research.

What have you installed lately?

First, take a look at the various applications that are installed on your machine and see if you have any programs with those letters in the name.

Personally, I can't think of a current application that would. Years ago, there was an application called Word Star. If it's still around today, the setup program might be wssetup.exe.

Search for the file

If you can’t match anything, you need to recall where you got this file. Use Windows search on your machine and locate the file on your machine.

(Now, this is where your question was a little unclear to me. You said you can’t find the program. How do you even know that it’s on your machine? For now, I’m going to assume that you actually have the file, and thus its location, in front of you.)

I have an article called, “What’s this file that ends in dll or exe?” This walks you through a series of steps that helps you gather information about the file, like its location, its name, its properties, and other sorts of things. This can all provide additional clues as to what and where this file came from and what its purpose might be.

What if it’s malware?

Finally, whenever you run across anything on our machine and you don’t know where it came from, it's not uncommon to be concerned about malware. Almost 90% of the time, it’s benign, but nonetheless, you should:

• Make sure you’re running your anti-malware software regularly. It should also be up-to-date and accessing a database that’s up-to-date.
• Run malwarebytes.org’s free tool, Malwarebytes. That will often catch a few things that other anti-malware tools won’t.

Ultimately, I don’t think that this is malware. It’s something that’s benign on your system. Hopefully, with some of the clues that you’ve gather you’ll be able to identify it.