Keyboard problem

I have no idea what the heck is going on, or what caused it.

All I know is that my wife opened up an online job application, it was a PDF (Adobe) file. She was trying to fill in the information when she called me into the room. She could not type any information onto the form. After playing around, I found out that the keyboard had somehow been disabled - I couldn't type anything in any other program either (such as Notepad). There was an icon in the system tray I had never seen before - looked like a little gray clock, or stopwatch, something like that I think. I opened it and there was some option (I don't remember what it was) that allowed me to unlock the keyboard. I also selected an option to remove it's icon from the system tray. So, now it's gone, and I can type, but with every keypress, there is a little beep, or poping sound - not from the speakers, but from the pc sound. The repeat rate when you hold down a key is also extremely slow now. I tried altering the repeat rate in the Control Panel, but that had no effect whatsoever.

I can not find anything else in the Control Panel about this, and I can't remember what that program with the little gray clock icon was called, so I don't have any kind of name to do a search on. I already tried rebooting the computer, but that had no effect. I don't know if it matters, but I had just done a Windows update before this.

Anyone have any idea what is going on?????????? (Using Windows XP, if that helps)

 

Hi RC, welcome to the BBS.

Sounds like "malware ". Have you looked in Add/Remove programs?...although, I doubt it would be that simple.

I would run Spybot and AdAware, in case it is one of those "clock sync" programs.

You could do Ctrl-Alt-Delete and see if you can spot it's executable program.

You could run msconfig (enter "msconfig" in the Start > Run command line) and see if you can disable it from running at startup.

If you can't isolate it, you may want to post a HiJack This log in the Security forum.

Keyboard...just check that "accessability" has not been enabled. See Help and Support.

Matt