Need to identify a virus

Discussion in 'malware problems & news' started by kanenas, Oct 13, 2002.

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  1. kanenas

    kanenas Registered Member

    Joined:
    Sep 7, 2002
    Posts:
    15
    Hello.
    The following happens on some friends' computer and I'm going along by using their descriptions.
    It seems that as they type some text in Word or some Excel spreadsheet, there is some different text that gets generated and replaces whatever they write.
    The text could be some silly sentence, asterisks, or random characters maybe. It happens randomly but once it does, it presumably makes it hard to type.
    Their system is only protected by McAfee antivirus and they claim they run it but it found nothing.
    I visited them, cleaned the computer with Ad-aware and SpyBot, and run TDS afterwards.
    The keyboard was still hooked and the funny behaviour persisted.
    They run WindowsXP and the virus seems to just be playful. It certainly doesn't try to hide.
    Has somebody come across this and and can identify which one it might be?
    Thanks in advance.
     
    kanenas, Oct 13, 2002
    #1
  2. LowWaterMark

    LowWaterMark Administrator

    Joined:
    Aug 10, 2002
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    Location:
    New England
    As one more good virus check, I suggest the online Panda Scanner, accessible through this wilders.org link:

    http://www.wilders.org/free_services.htm

    The extra scanning you did may not have found everything, virus-wise, so this will confirm it further. (The Panda online scanner is really quite good.)

    However, the problem may not be a virus. It could be the built-in Windows XP voice recognition software. This is a common problem people experience, too. The solution, if that is it, is to disable it. See this article:

    http://www.computeruser.com/news/02/03/12/news1.html
    Best Wishes,
    LowWaterMark
     
    LowWaterMark, Oct 13, 2002
    #2
  3. kanenas

    kanenas Registered Member

    Joined:
    Sep 7, 2002
    Posts:
    15
    Thanks a bunch.
    Right on the dot!
    The culprit was the speech recognition software. Removed it and the problem went away.
    Take care.
     
    kanenas, Oct 15, 2002
    #3
  4. LowWaterMark

    LowWaterMark Administrator

    Joined:
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    18,282
    Location:
    New England
    Great :)

    That one gets a lot of people. MS insists on enabling so much by default.

    Best Wishes,
    LowWaterMark
     
    LowWaterMark, Oct 15, 2002
    #4
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