a ghost or a virus .

hi alll
has anyone ever experienced windows and menus opening on the screen by themselves or similar.

I am using win98 and on a regular basis this happens to me, first the cursor slows and moves in a jumping fashion and then everything goes wild, I can onlt stop this by re-starting.

any ideas ?

please help

hmmmm.... must be a virus. does it do anything more on your system?

I have seen no other problems apart from what I mentioned before, I have run the latest McAfee virus scan and it found 1 virus on 2 MS templates then name was w97m/buenda.gen, these were cleaned but the problem is there still.

I am able to bring up the close program dialogue box and move up and down it with the cursor keys, but that is the only thiing I can do

I do remember another problem, which may or may not be related , windows will not shut own, it has to be down physically

Also recently today for the first I managed to stop the the menu/opeming problem by being able to close the rundll32 program in the close program dialogue box, it indicated that it was not responding. There were also 2 other rundll32's present

I looked up the perpose of the rundll32 and found it's a program that enabled dlls's to run as applications, I guess this programm is making random calls to the UI

anyone have any ideas

cheers

i cant say as i've experienced this sort of problem before, or even heard of anyone having it. what we do when windows is behaving this crazy is reformat the hard drive and reinstall windows. try it and see if you experience the same thing again.

A bit extreem! If I remember rightly that's a macro virus that infects word documents (I might be wrong, so check in your anti-virus software). You might be re-infecting your computer every time you open a word document. To make sure this doesn't happen, go into options in word and turn off macros and see if it re-infects then

Alun Harford

yeah man, research that virus. you can get info for it on ay antivirus website out there. also, update your antivirus software, there might be something else affecting your box that your software is to old to pick up. but from my experience your antivirus software is usually the first thing attacked when a major virus is on your comp. ive gotten alot of them too, KLEZ, SirCAM, I LOVE YOU. they all suck and ive ended up reformatting everytime. its nice to have a cleaned off maching sometimes...that might in fact be your solution.

But don't give up too quickly - re-installing everything can be a real pain - particularly if you can't find all the CDs/discs - so check you can find them all BEFORE you start.

Alun Harford

If you do decide to re-install, then you may want to consider win2k(preferred) or xp. They are mucho more stable. You will of course still be able to get viruses without proper protection. However, I frequently had problems with 98 that had nothing to do with viruses. Windows tends to run faster with frequent re-installs anyway....LOL.

Come to think of it, I've never had to reinstall my linux pc, and I use it just as much. Hmmm, that's a discussion for a different forum I think. :-)

This happened to me once. After a month of re-installing, formatting, scanning, adnauseum, you'll never guess what it turned out to be.

Shorts in my mouse cable.

My cat had chewed the cable bare in one place, and the wires were exposed. On occasion, when I tugged it in the right direction, some of the wires would cross, causing random mouse movements and mouseclick events to fire, which occasionally, would open menus, close windows, or just be a pain in the butt.

Chances are, this isn't whats happening to you, but when I read your problem, I chuckled as I remembered what happened to me.

But do yourself a favor, and check your mouse cable, make sure it's well connected. Unlikely, but it could save you lots of time doing re-installs.

/end my irrelevant sidetrack.

thats an interesting cause to a computing problem!

windows 98 is worthless and should never ever been installed. that right there should solve 90% of windows related problems.

other than that. do you have a laser mouse? i've sporadically witnessed that whacky mouse jumping stuff myself but unlike yours..it does go away soon as i move the mouse around. i would highly doubt its a virus and more like the win98 install screwing itself up like it likes to do every 30 days after fresh install. unless you absolutely have to use it id highly suggest at least upgrading to win2k if you use windows..and of course you could always go linux

martin88: Did you ever find out why your cursor was flying all over the screen and popping menus open? I opened an email that was purportedly from eBay (it was actually not though), and I lost control of my mouse, my cursor was jumping all over the screen, and menus starting popping open all over the place. I had to restart my computer, and within a couple of minutes it happened again.

Did you have a virus? If so, what virus was it?

If anyone else is familiar with what I'm talking about, please advise. Thanks!

I have got the same problem with "the cursor every now and again taking off and doing its own thing, opening windows, closing windows, changing screen settings etc".

People with the same problem might also like to keep an eye on

http://computercops.biz/postx52467-0-0.html

where there is a similar bulletin board discussion going on. They haven't solved it yet either. Whoever sorts out the problem first, let me know.

graham@nowell.com

Hi. This has been going on for months. I followed that 'hijack this' thing that that norbie guy told me, and it restsarted my comp in safe mode and none of the things he told me to delete were there. It started ****ing up again, HEAPS, so I deleted EVERYTHING that it picked up lol. Luckily, I did a system restore point before that so I wasn't ****ed.. But yeah.. If anyone at all is interested in helping me, It would be GREATLY appreciated. I run Windows XP and this is really pissing me off.. Thanks.