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Can't find my virus!

  • 16-12-2010 4:56pm
    #1
    spoonface
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 339 ✭✭


    Something weird has been happening with my XP laptop for the last month and it's driving me up the walls. I'm almost sure I have a virus or a trojan but can't for the life of me find it or eradicate it. It's main symptom is that every now and then characters are inserted into the keyboard buffer. So I could be editing a document or anything else and suddenly the chars \n and \b come up on the screen repeatedly. Obviously this is completely disruptive.

    I've tried everything I can think of to catch what it is but cannot e.g. several different virus programs; looking for strange entries in regedit's startup section ; uninstalling any programs I don't really need ; using Chrome instead of Firefox in case Firefox has a virus ; looking for recently modified executables in the windows\system32 folder ; watching tasklist carefully, taking screenshots every time it happens and making sure every program there is legitimate.

    So I don't know what more I can do besides reinstalling the OS which I'd rather not do. Anyone got any more ideas how to catch and kill this little bugger of a virus.


Comments

  • #2
    JDxtra
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,011 ✭✭✭JDxtra


    \n is the ASCII code for a carriage return. Instead of \b, could it be \r which also appears? \r is a carriage return in ASCII code.

    May not be virus related.


  • #3
    spoonface
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 339 ✭✭spoonface


    JDxtra wrote: »
    \n is the ASCII code for a carriage return. Instead of \b, could it be \r which also appears? \r is a carriage return in ASCII code.

    May not be virus related.

    Thanks. I realise they're control codes but I think they're virus related coz they come out of nowhere when I'm in any application, even the DOS-prompt. It's definitely \b and \n in particular that show up. And sometimes just gobbledygook special characters.


  • #4
    FSL
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,456 ✭✭✭FSL


    Have you considered that it may be an intermittent fault on your keyboard?


  • #5
    spoonface
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 339 ✭✭spoonface


    FSL wrote: »
    Have you considered that it may be an intermittent fault on your keyboard?

    I guess that's a maybe. B and N are next to each other alright. Hard to tell. I'm on a laptop so it won't be easy to just swap another keyboard in.


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