Crazy Stuff Happening on Laptop
 

I got called to look at a friends laptop at school today because he was getting really freaked out.
It seems that text is somehow appearing on the screen as if someone was typing on the keyboard. There are also random menus that open/close by themselves. He was on the wireless network at school so I thought that some might be using some type of control program like backorifice or something, but when I ran netstat and looked at the running processes nothing was out of the ordinary. Of course it stopped when i pulled out the wireless card but I don't know what was causing it in the first place, and it comes back again after awhile.

Has anyone heard of this happening or know what could cause it.

could be a trojan.

Run an anti-virus program then a trojan scanner and see what comes up.

http://download.com.com/3000-2239-10...ml?tag=lst-0-1

I've tried this program myself and found it very good.

I remember hearing and Microsoft posting issues about wireless Microsoft keyboard being able to do exactly what you are speaking of. One guy was typing and having his text ending up in his neighbor computer, I bet yeah, sometimes like this, a computer with the same signal or other wireless device was causing this.

Just make sure you have the proper precautions on your friends system...ie...firewall, anti-virus and port-blocker tools and there won't be any harm or foul done.

Just consider a techno fluke.

Yes, wireless keyboards and mice are far from perfect. We've got a bunch of them at our school. The wireless mice allow the teacher to walk around the room and still click through a .ppt presentation. However, the mice often get their signals crossed. My teacher's presentation will often click through itself because a teacher in the next room is using their mouse.

Is it a great tech idea? Absolutely. It is perfect? Far from it. lol

Sorry about that, forgot to say that I ran norton and nothing came up.
I had orginally thought about the wireless keyboard issue until I saw that it was a laptop.

Someone is using a remote desktop access...if he's running XP he should be able to disable that from happening. Try network properties.

You might also try installing a program like ZoneAlarm to control which programs have access to the network.

Iff his laptop has and infered port on it it's still possible for wireless keyboards and mice to interfear with it

I had a infraed laptop before, can't be the issue since the range of the device is pretty limited. You'd have to stick a wireless device right in its face to make it work.

Just my 2Cent. Get the zonealarm, see what's up.

Infrared is not the only wireless method these days - and wireless keyboards and mice are starting to have much better range. I've seen demonstrations of people in the next room over, through a wall, typing on a wireless keyboard and having the computer pick it up.

I read of a similar occurence once...turns out the person had voice recognition software running.

Since it stopped when you jerked the wireless card, I'd lean towards CS733t explanation, looks like remote access.

Are the words that are typed coherent, or is it giberish? What application is the typing appearing in? Word? Notepad? Command prompt?

Well, it I don't think it was remote access since I disabled the service. As far as content, it looked like someone was writing a text document since words would appear in whatever application you were in.

I wish I had tought to run arp, but I only did netstat. I can't do anything until thursday since it's finals week, but I'll let ya'll know what happens. Thanks for the ideas.

sounds like Sub7 to me

Well, I feel really stupid now. Turns out it was voice recognition software that's built into MS Office. The thing is he doesn't remember turning it on, and I'm not sure why it stopped when the NIC came out.

In any case, thanks for the help. I'll let you know if anything else comes up.

hmm i've got a similar problem....every time i start any microsoft office program it wants me to set up the voice recog...i just wanna type ffs!
any ideas except waste time speaking at my monitor?!

On mine I just set it up like it wanted then disabled it in the toolbar.