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Posessed laptop - any ideas?

B

bernse

Diamond Member
I just received an email from the folks that are in Central America. It seems they are having an odd problem with their Dell laptop. I was wondering if anyone here could shed some light on it.

Here is a quote from an email they sent us last night:

Ever since our internet went down here ? it is still off and on ? we seem to have a problem of our computer adding words and letters unbidden. As I write, the hard drive is spinning, and continues to spin when I stop writing. In the meantime between my words the computer inserts words from somewhere. Bill notices this (to great annoyance of course) when he is working in Excel, and I do in Word also. This is in addition to the annoyance of not knowing if I have spaced, done typos, forgotten a word, etc. here in outlook until it finally appears on the screen. Do you think we have a virus? Norton doesn?t think so. We have used the scan several times.<snip>

the to to the A. F. A. A. all over all-day I were a hammock the I am an and they they all they or may they may I may have they may am you call me and I may as they stand now they all day on CNN, ESPN they, and then understand so Omni/IA I am me oh no way I found out lower serious false you?re already halfway by all I can find a 92, and my way they do- all and Dan money and then-half a Montana law and signed under a file, and on and on their eyes a day and see how to all seen as many more they they version to, and, theAnd

I left the computer to get some water and the above is what was inserted while I was gone.
Click to expand...

I've already told them to make sure their Norton is updated with the newest definitions incase it is a virus. Any other ideas? They are using a slow, dial up account in Belize, if that makes any difference.
 
Their copy of Norton may be compromised as well. Have they scanned with a locked boot floppy with a DOS AV Scanner?

Thorin
 
I doubt it... they are not very savy. Can you recomend a DOS scanner that would be a "hopefully" small download since they have such a slow pipe?
 
I had a problem with one if you get too close to the touch pad, it would jump araound.
 
Possession, huh . . . Perhaps Dell will be kind enough to REposses it.

rolleye.gif


😀

I guess it is out of warranty . . . try booting with the dignostic disk that comes on the "Dell Drivers and Applications" CD.

Then try an anti-virus at the DOS level . . .

If it all comes up OK, then reinstall the OS (making sure to install ALL the drivers from the Dell website or applications CD).

 
Originally posted by: bernse
I doubt it... they are not very savy. Can you recomend a DOS scanner that would be a "hopefully" small download since they have such a slow pipe?
Click to expand...
You should be able to DL a free version from McAfee or Symantec. But they'd have to do it on a system other then the one they're trying to fix.... Which from the sounds of things isn't an option.... so your best bet is to grab one yourself and courier it....

Thorin
 
Thanks for the help. Someone on another board mentioned the possibility of it being Speech Recognition being turned on. I'll get them to check that possibility too.
 
Incase anyone is curious, it was indeed the speech recognition cone bananas.

Thanks for the ideas though!
 
Hmmmm interesting, I've never heard of that before but I'm glad you found a solution. Thanks for comin back and lettin us know (I'll keep it in the back of my head for the next guy!).

Thorin
 
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