Apoint.exe/Alps Touchpad Driver Issues?

helpctr.exe going crazy/Apoint.exe problems...

My system has been acting pretty bizzare lately. several days ago I started having firefox help tabs opening up randomly and multiplying for no reason. I went to Opera and it was doing same thing, Opera help tabs opening up multiplying until I shut down the browser. Holding down the Alt button stopped them from multiplying oddly enough I found out as I was using alt+f4 as a quick way to end the browser. Then I found out other programs I opened up were doing the same thing. CCleaner, Taskmanager , IE8 ext were all having their help center windows open up. If I clicked x button they go away but if I used the touchpad to move the cursor , said window would pop back up. I bought a mouse to see if that solved anything and it seemed to at first but the problem has shown up while using mouse as well.

One of the things I found out while in taskmanager was that apoint.exe was using 99% of the cpu and was also slowing down my system to snail pace. If I end the process before it takes over I can do something, if I dont, apoint.exe takes over and I can't even use the computer. Don't know if I have a bad touchpad software driver or what. I had to stop the apoint.exe process from start up in msconfig just so I can get online to post this problem. As I type this , I have no problems with random help center tabs opening up but sometimes they can appear without warning after a while of being online using the browser.

I've done scans with SAS and Malwarebytes with nothing found. Your help is appreciated.

 

have you gone to the manufacturer of the laptops website to look for an updated driver?

 

Yes, it was an optional update and did nothing as far as I can tell. Although having been online the past few hrs , haven't had any issues so far. The apoint.exe process is not running though as I disabled from startup in msconfig. I don't know if I'm going to have to keep apoint.exe from loading from now on or what.

Edit*I hope using msconfig is ok, as Ive read on majorgeeks forum that they don't recommend using msconfig to stop a service or program from starting up. I did download Starup CPL and Autoruns just in case.

 

*update*

I haven't had any random help tabs multiplying in my firefox lately since getting rid of apoint.exe in task manager. I decided to not have it run in startup since after just a min or so of starting up it takes over the cpu basically locking up the computer. Dont' know if I have this licked or not but we'll see.

 

Just when I thought my computer was acting normal again, helpctr.exe starts taking over randomly hogging system resources and locking up my pc and when I was clicking on the address bar of firefox to type in this site , firefox's help tabs start multiplying again. I'm going to post a hijackthislog at another site to see if I got some trojan or something messing things up. I hope my HD isn't going bad again.

 

Re: Helpctr.exe taking over laptop...

Well now its seems to be helpctr.exe is whats having all the issues now. Haven't had apoint.exe problems since disabling it Autoruns. Help and Support Center for XP just seems to take over and lock down my computer out of no where now. It even took over when I was in safemode trying to figure some things out. I unticked helpsvc in Autoruns to give time to figure this thing out.