mprexe.exe????

I am currently running win 98 first version and I have a small exe. trying to access the internet and my firewall is stopping it{norton personel}. the name of it is mprexe.exe and it resides in the win system file. A search on Microsoft.com turns itup as beloning on the win 98 disk.
My question is this what is it and why is this the first time I have ever had this occurrence.{to my knowlege and have been running firewall for 2 months}