I’ve never been caught by computer virus, or so I believe, but at the moment I am experiencing something weird.
Since yesterday, my PC seems to be acting strange at times. When I browse, the pointer goes crazy and can’t be controlled by the mouse. I thought somebody had taken control on my PC somehow and immediately shut down my PC. This happened twice but Avast!, Symantec, MacAfee, and RV on-line scans found nothing on my PC as well as Spybot, and Adaware, and Ewido. Now, I experienced the third time and, this time, I waited and checked Taskmanager…only to find nothing suspicious. The pointer was settled after a while. Kerio, Taskmanager and Spybot’s process list don’t show anything suspicious. Now I am puzzled: If someone is so good at erasing evidences, I wonder why the same individual can be doing something mischievous like this rather than quietly monitoring my PC and taking best of it.
I’m on Win XP Home SP2, using Kerio 4 and Avast Home. Any idea?
PS From when have they got these adorably geeky mug cups and T-shirts ads on the boards?
Hello Umath, do you have a wireless mouse ?
Does your nabour have one too ? ;D
Do you have a cellular phone nearby ?
Are there any radio-controlled devices in the nabourhood ?
All possibilities for the weird pointer behaviour.
I experience this problem sometimes. I have a wireless optical mouse, and I found that the mouse mat was reflecting the light and moving the pointer all by itself, now I don’t use a mat - no problems with a drunken pointer… ;D
However, by “the pointer goes crazy,” it even D&Ded one of shortcuts from startmenu to desktop in front of me. And yet, the manner of the movement was as if I let a drunk or a 5 year-old boy use the mouse and the app is Spybot. Also, it opened a few other harmless apps on the startmenu (What use of it?). ???
To be honest, I’m still using an archaic mouse, which has two buttons and wire. Optical or laser?..leave my mouse alone.
PS
Upon the latest update update to 0529-1, I’ve done my third boot-time scan after I found the pointer acting like a drunk. Nothing found.
OT
I guess I am smart enough to find it out by myself. Hint: Click on the banner.
Jokes aside, Eddy, when I first time came here, people worried about you. Nice to see you got well.
It turned out that my problem is not related with trojan or virus since the same symptoms came back even after re-installation and net connection is not necessary.
Now I think this is more likely to be some kind of conflict in the system as you guys pointed out…if not the mouse. I suspect it has something to do with the latest update of Windows. However, considering the frequency and harmlessness of the symptoms, I think I can live with this.
In any way, thank you for having spent your time on reading/making the comments.
Yeeeessss, them “official MS updates” can do you in. : Here are some other things that come to mind, for yourself and others:
I don’t see a firewall listed in your message. I’d recommend Sygate Personal Firewall (5.6), a freebee that’s well respected. That should make things alot more difficult for “them” IF you are being molested. See what happens after it’s in place.
Next I’d say 256mb minimum RAM is another thing to make sure of with XP. If you’re swapping back to hard drive all the time, the mouse may not be the highest priority and act strange. However the very unusual “sentient” actions you’ve experienced wouldn’t seem to indicate this will help that much.
Finally, are there some known/unknown issues of interference between any of your installed programs? The TSR’s (startup programs) especially are suspect. The 30 day full free trial of System Mechanic (iolo.com) may help sort this out.