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Need some Techie Assistance

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by TonyPSchaefer, Mar 29, 2005.

  1. TonyPSchaefer

    TonyPSchaefer Your Friendly Moderator
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    My brother called this evening asking about something his computer has recently started doing. He'd never seen it before, he had tried to explain it to his work tech, but he had no idea what my brother was talking about. So I asked him to do a screen capture and send it to me and now I have no idea what it is.

    I'm hoping someone here has seen this before and knows how to get rid of it.

    I have removed all personal information to protect his privacy. As you can see, he's accessing his work Outlook mail from his home PC. When he clicks on a message to open it, the following chain of events occur:
    1) the "X" icon appears.
    2) the IE e runs across the bottom of the screen.
    3) IE closes.

    At first thought, the "X" thing looks like a pop-up blocker icon. But steps 2 and 3 are pretty dramatic for a pop-up blocker. So then I noticed the icon bar that looks like there's a pop-up blocker enabled. He said that he's had that bar and blocker enabled for about a year and it's always worked beautifully and always in the background.

    So what the heck is it?
     
    #1 TonyPSchaefer, Mar 29, 2005
  2. pjm877

    pjm877 Member

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    Never seen anything like it.. few questions? Is he opening the same message? Or does this happen on every message?

    Best guess is if same message: The message has an Outlook Macro and it is trying to do something to "windows" Something is keeping this from happening???

    Virus/worm scan the inbox/outlook. Does the Co use symantec corp antivirus??

    Another thing to try is open mail box with something that could care less about anything to do with Outlook macro's and the such... I do not use Outlook for my mail handler for this reason.. too many e-mail worms out there... and work is a Lotus Notes env.

    One other thing to check is the symantec/MacFee data bases and see they have anything that looks like this discribed.

    Good luck.
     
    #2 pjm877, Mar 29, 2005
  3. Tideland Prius

    Tideland Prius Moderator of the North
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    I would lean towards the possibility of a virus especially if that only occurs when a particular message is highlighted
     
    #3 Tideland Prius, Mar 30, 2005
  4. DaveinOlyWA

    DaveinOlyWA 3rd Time was Solariffic!!

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    kinda looks like an external message that isnt available as a preview. these are almost always spam and one of the prime ways to spread spyware.

    another thing could be the fact that he is accessing work email. could it be a conflict with permissions with viewing external images remotely?

    does it happen on all messages or just some of them?
     
    #4 DaveinOlyWA, Mar 30, 2005
  5. zielin

    zielin New Member

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    Here's what I would do to begin troubleshooting...

    1) Make sure he has some sort of antivirus software installed (Norton is my favorite), and run a scan.

    2) Check for spyware. There are several programs out there to do this. My favorite is a program called Spybot Search & Destroy. You can get it here http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html.

    3) Go to the "Run..." command on your start menu and type in msconfig. When the System Configuration Utility window pops up select the startup tab. The list displayed is a list of all the programs that start up with your computer. Uncheck anything that is not vital. You can usually guess at what a file is for based on the path and file name. If you're unsure about a file try googling for it and see what turns up.
    So once you have a minimum set of applications restart your computer and see if the problem goes away. If it does, then you know that one of the apps you disabled is most likely the problem. So start enabling the apps again one by one until the problem comes back. When it shows up again, you'll know what the culprit is.

    Also, if you suspect that it might be the popup blocker then just try disabling the popup blocker first and see if it goes away.
     
    #5 zielin, Mar 30, 2005
  6. TonyPSchaefer

    TonyPSchaefer Your Friendly Moderator
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    Thanks, guys.
    Let's see if I can answer a few questions correctly, based on the information he gave me last night.

    Is he opening the same message? Or does this happen on every message?
    This point never came up, but I'm guessing that he would have tried several messages rather than the some one over and over. I'm reminded of Frued's definition of insanity.

    Make sure he has some sort of antivirus software installed (Norton is my favorite), and run a scan.
    He has Norton installed at home and knows that it automatically updates regularly. I can't speak for the last time he did a full-out system scan.

    Check for spyware.
    I sent him links for "ToniArts Easy Cleaner", "Search and Destroy", and "HiJack This!". That was late last night and I doubt he's used them yet.

    The list displayed is a list of all the programs that start up with your computer.
    Easy Cleaner has a similar function.

    Additional Information:
    He recently (not sure how recently) installed the M$ Antivirus Software and he does the M$ Updates when available. I think he has SP2 installed.
     
    #6 TonyPSchaefer, Mar 30, 2005
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