I recently picked up a fairly interesting virus. It goes like this.

On the first computer I picked it up on, the virus produces random keystrokes periodically. It also starts up programs such as iTunes, Calculator, and Outlook every now and again, and has the irritating habit of putting the computer onto standby at every conceivable oppurtunity. The virus also appears to be invigorated by connection to the internet: it will lie dormant when offline, and then restore itself with renewed vigour when connected back to the net.

Neither AVG nor Avast can pick this up (even with a boot-scan), although Avast does regularly pick up some sort of 'Pwdump' tool, twice, in quick succession, although this may be unrelated. The strangest bit is that random keystrokes still happen even when I've left the comuter at the system password state. This suggests to me that the virus does not reside solely in the hard disk/operating system. I am slightly wary of referring to it as a BIOS virus, as many who have done so have been scorned for doing so and told their keyboard is deffective! I have formatted the hard drive since then, and still the virus is present.

In my infinite wisdom, I used a memory stick to transfer data from this PC to another, and a virus appeared shortly after on this one. However, on this computer, the virus has the irritating effect of stopping the use of keys a-f and j-:/;, ie most of the middle row. The keyboard is not deffective: The keys still function if, for example, another key is held down (such as the shift key). It might be a completely unrelated problem to the first, but perhaps the behaviour of the virus differs from computer to computer.

Your thoughts please?

Many thanks,

MBM

[B]Hello and welcome to Techspot.[/B]

[b][color=red]Very Important:[/color] Before deciding whether you should clean or reformat your system, go and read this thread [b][URL="http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic65943.html"][color=blue]HERE[/color][/URL][/b] and decide what it is you want to do.[/b]

If after reading the above, you wish to clean your system, do the following.

Go and read the [b][URL="http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic58138.html"]Viruses/Spyware/Malware, preliminary removal instructions.[/URL][/b] Follow all the instructions exactly.

Post fresh [b]HJT[/b], [b][color=red]AVG Antispyware[/color] and Combofix logs as [color=blue][URL="http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic19133.html"]Attachments[/URL][/color][/b] into this thread, only after doing the above.

[b]Also, let me know the results of the Panda Antirootkit scan.[/b]

Regards Howard

[color=red][b]This thread is for the use of[/color] Mad Bad Monk [color=red]only. [color=blue]Please don`t post your own virus/spyware problems in this thread. Instead, open a new thread in our[/color] [URL="http://www.techspot.com/vb/menu28.html"]security and the web forum[/URL].[/color][/b]