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I have something on my system that acts as if someone is intermittantly (sometimes constantly) pressing the "M" key on the keyboard, and sometimes tries to dial out(thank goodnes for ZoneAlarm). It is more active in the first half of an hour than it is in the last half of an hour. New anti-virus updates and subsequent scans have found nothing. If I can ID it I can probly get a tool to remove it. Re-formating isnt an option if I cant screen it from the files I will have to save to disc, then re-load onto the puter. Does this sound familier to anyone?

"We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would harm us". George Orwell

Fighting For Justice With Brains Of Steel !
<img src="http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/atengun2X.GIF" border=0>

_________________
The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.

PC are to open to attack! Try this free virus scan:

http://housecall.antivirus.com/housecall/start_corp.asp

It sounds like a virus but I could be wrong. For the last few months sometimes when I shut down my PC I get a screen full of yellows “M” but since I am on a cable modem I can not tell if my computer is trying to contact another computer. I have McAfee and it has not showed any signs of a virus but I can not get the fire wall to work the way they say it should so I have not been able to feel like my computer is save. I wish I really understood computers so I could tell if my computer was under attack. One of the things about computers is if you get a bad track on the hard drive it can cause you to re-install your system and of course wipe out everything that happened to me last year. On my new PC I have a remove able drive which I then have two disk which I swap out every few weeks or so. I run Ghost drive to drive first and then every few days run XCOPY with a date to pick up all new data in my system. When I had the last crash I lost less then one percent. While there are people out that I have pissed off and they have the knowledge to get in to my computer but I do not know if they have.
Have you tried running “msconfig” from your “Start” bar? It goes like this click “Start” then “Run” then type in “msconfig” then click “Setup”. At that point you check most of what is running on your computer. Some program or site you have been to of late my have changed your Start Up setting and it is trying to dial that site. I real wish Windows had a real fire wall in it and just did not let anyone download to your computer. Well I bet you know all of this already wish I could help more.

Thanks for the help Wayne, yeah I'm familiar with msconfig, and I've re-formatted a couple times over the past 2 years, and now...

<sheepish smirk> It's looking now like it wasnt a virus but rather an oversight!! My Saitec X-45 Joystick/Throttle has 2 rotorys on the throttle that can be "banded" which allows you to asign segments of thier rotations as if they were switches(so each rotory could do the job of 20 or so switches if you wanted to set them up like that). Well I have one of the rotorys set up to change sensor ranges if you turn them a little and to change thrust vector (for helo collective)if you turn them alot. The other one of the rotorys is set up to turn on the FLIR if twisted counterclockwise and to turn on the HARM seeker if turned clockwise. Well the keyboard key for the HARM seker is (yeah) "M"!! And I noticed early today that the rotory knob was twisted off the detent and onto the "M" side of the knob LOLOL so everytime the computer cycled through checking stuff, it found the "M" key being depressed via the joystick, and thus the ghostly highjinx ensued !! I still dont know why it messed up the desktop ICONs or tried to dial out to the net, but it stopped as soon as I unplugged the joystick, and with the stick plugged in all day (and the knob properly centered on it's detent) nothing weird has happened. ROFLMAO

"We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would harm us". George Orwell

Fighting For Justice With Brains Of Steel !
<img src="http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/atengun2X.GIF" border=0>

_________________
The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.

Did I ever tell you I LOVE COMPUTERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

<img src=icon_smile_evil.gif border=0 align=middle> <img src=icon_smile_blackeye.gif border=0 align=middle> <img src=icon_smile_8ball.gif border=0 align=middle>

<img src=icon_smile_big.gif border=0 align=middle>

Sometimes I will be surfing and some SOB site will place a dial out program that wants me to dial some place on the moon and it take almost re-booting to get it to stop! I will spend up to 10 minutes just keying Ctrl Alt Del and End Task over and over again....

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=1 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>Sometimes I will be surfing and some SOB site will place a dial out program that wants me to dial some place on the moon and it take almost re-booting to get it to stop! I will spend up to 10 minutes just keying Ctrl Alt Del and End Task over and over again....
<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

Wow! I have herad of adult websites using those...LOL

--Raven

"'When it comes to my turn, will you want me to go?' 'For democracy, any man would give his only begotten son.'"

Wayne , you need to get Zone Alarm. It's a free firewall and one click of the button stops ALL outgoing or incoming traffic. BTW after uninstalling and re-installing ALL afternoon, it turned out to be the configuration software for the stick. Editing the registry is the ONLY thing that got all( I hope) of the config proggy out of the system, so I could re-install it properly. So far so good(but I said that last night too <img src=icon_smile_sad.gif border=0 align=middle> )

"We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would harm us". George Orwell

Fighting For Justice With Brains Of Steel !
<img src="http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/atengun2X.GIF" border=0>

_________________
The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.

Sounds a bit like you might have some spyware!

does ZoneAlarm tell you which program is trying to dial out?
unfortunately there doen't seem to be a spyware scanning
personal firewall, you'll have to find the software and delete it
it usually hides out in yor internet tempory files folder.

Generally personal firewalls will stop these things from doing
whatever they were meant for,so if you can't find it
try letting it dial out and watch for alerts..
that might be a bit risky though ,depending whats on your PC

I hate to sound preachy and opinionated, but:

All that one really needs is good virus protection. Personal firewalls are typically useless, because any planned attack (which is unlikely on a home PC) will come during idle time if it is in any way convenient. A personal firewall tends to eat more resources than it provides in security. The best advice I can give anyone is to be VERY careful what they download and install, and always keep a <b>reliable</b> backup.

There are some freeware programs that will scan for spyware, and a good pop-up killer is a nice plus...but these are not necessity...just watch what you do.

</rant>

--Raven

"'When it comes to my turn, will you want me to go?' 'For democracy, any man would give his only begotten son.'"

gotta dissagree Rave, I use "Pop-Up Stopper" and it works pretty well, I use "Spy Bot" to clean out the nasty cookies(plus it's updatable). My "keep your nose out of my buisness" gear does a good job of letting me go anywhere I want to without worrying about what I might drag home. I've gotten exactly 1 virus in 2 years+ , and that was just because a Norton update mod of some sort had dissabled the Email protection for a week. Zone Alarm takes up 5% of my resourses, and since I always have the resource meter running, I can keep track of how low it gets at any time with just a glance. If you've ever went looking for proggys at the warez sites you'll quickly want Zone Alarm for its instant ability to stop other peoples shennanigans in thier tracks(NOT kidding, the Russian and Chinese sites are like hand to hand combat with flood attacks to get your AV proggy to slip up and let one through) you just hit the ZA kill button and close out the dozen or so IE panes that you get in like 2 seconds, then open the kill button again and go on with things, and the little ZA upload/download meter is a godsend for telling you if a page or anything else is just slow or not downloading at all. Yeah Wayne ZA tells you what is trying to dial out and what port it's using and better yet WONT let it dial out till you give it your okey dokey. After a week or two you know who to let out and you can give it permanent permission to do it's work, you'll really only want to do this with your Email and messenger stuff, the media players are always wanting to go play but you just give them the permamnent NO and the "dont tell me no more" check box and your botherment is minimal. And ZA also takes you to thier website if you click on the "more info" for a port attack and they tell you if it's something to worry about or not. It's great and it's free, I'd actually pay for ZA if I wasnt Scotish LOLOL

"We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would harm us". George Orwell

Fighting For Justice With Brains Of Steel !
<img src="http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/atengun2X.GIF" border=0>

_________________
The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.

Hey Boomer what do you open up to reduce the power output of your processor in order to play games such as Longbow? I'm just curious in case I want to put it on my computer. These things look great but I read some horror stories on SimHq that make me think "No Way"!
BTW,
Any pointers on launching Janes SH?



Edited by - tritonal on May 19 2003 9:29 PM

yeah it takes a little tweaking to get LongBowII to run.
"CPU KIll" reduces the chip , but I dont remember having to do that for LongbowII, but you have to reduce the amount of RAM available to the game, for that you can use "Too Much Memeory" you used to be able to get it here, but the link is dead tonight
http://longbow2.filetap.com/
you can also reduce the RAM in msconfig/general/advanced page click the "limit memory to" to under 212 if I remember right. That does the same thing as the "Too Much Memory" utility.

I also have these notes, but I dont remember if they are BOTH nessesary or if they are mutually exclusive to each other, it MAY depend on what graphics board you have. You may want to just try each setting and see which works for your rig.

Longbow2:run the LB2.DDU.EXE in the Longbow2 folder and select "software".

also In your Lb2 folder there is "Lb2cfg.exe", open it and you will have a selection of cards to be selected under "Direct 3D".

Launch F/A-18? What do you mean? I dont recall having any trouble with it right from the install.


"We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would harm us". George Orwell

Fighting For Justice With Brains Of Steel !
<img src="http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/atengun2X.GIF" border=0>

_________________
The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.

Thanx.



Edited by - tritonal on May 21 2003 11:22 AM

boomer: I guess I am just old school...I watch my DUN to see if I am making excessive data transfers and use netstat if anything seems quirky. I check my cookies and dump my caches regularly, and I don't hit the warez sites too often...just too much BS when there is IRC and P2P. Whatever works for you, though...I just had to throw in my 2 cents.

--Raven

"'When it comes to my turn, will you want me to go?' 'For democracy, any man would give his only begotten son.'"

no prob Rave , no prob at all, different strokes is all <img src=icon_smile_big.gif border=0 align=middle>

"We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would harm us". George Orwell

Fighting For Justice With Brains Of Steel !
<img src="http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/atengun2X.GIF" border=0>

_________________
The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.

I use Ad Aware 5.0 for all my pop-up and spyware problems. I think you can get it for free at download.com. It works really well. Haven't had one pop-up or ad since I installed it.

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his. -General George S. Patton Jr.

I had ad aware too but spybot finds everything ad aware does and many more, no foolin. Spybot is free and updateable with new ads to clean.

"We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would harm us". George Orwell

Fighting For Justice With Brains Of Steel !
<img src="http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/atengun2X.GIF" border=0>

_________________
The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.