unknown nuisance

Hi. I'm having a wierd issue.

Every 5 or 10 minutes a untitled window pops up and closes all by itself. It's irritating for many reasons. Mostly because it kicks me out of whatever I am trying to do. Including games. I get killed alot.

I've run a couple spyware programs (ad-aware and spybot) as well as McAfee antivirus. Needless to say, I haven't been able to find the problem.

Anyone have a clue how I can find out what is popping up and/or how I can get rid of it?

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

 

What does the pop up say? If it appears and disappears too quickly to read, right-click on My Computer, click on manage, and go to error reports to see if you can find any info. Let us know.

 

just a thought but next time it pops up right click it and see if you can get to propeties this might tell you something whilst in properties see if there is something against address(URL) if there is you could add it to your hosts file this should stop it from appearing, also check task manager for anything you dont recognise

 

It doesn't say anything. In fact it pops up and closes so fast that all I ever get of it is an empty box down by the "start" button for half a second. It doesn't have a title or anything. I'll try to see if I can read anything in the system error screen. I just have to wait a few minutes...

 

There it goes again! Bah, nothing in error reports though... Let me look in look in task manager.

 

This pop up could be something quite innocent e.g. an installed program trying to update itself but cant because your firewall, hostfile or antispy progs wont let it, I'm not suggesting that you let it, not until you have identified it, have you tried to maximise the popup by double clicking the title bar?

 

Arg! I disable some useless stuff and it's still there.

That's kinda what I was thinking Roc. Might be why my spyware programs and anti-virus won't catch it. I even considered that it might be system restore taking a snapshot of my computer but I've since ruled that out.

I can't maximize the title bar because it closes itself a half a second after it pops up. the one time I managed to maximize it (got lucky and just happened to have my curser over it when it popped) all I saw was a blank window before it closed itself.

 

If you have a pop-up blocker turned on, turn it off and see if you can make out what it is.
Bronson7

 

ok do you have a firewall? if so which one? might be worth looking at your exceptions lists for any program you think might need updating but can't, at the bottom of the windows firewall exceptions list is a tick box regarding displaying messages when a pop up is blocked, is this ticked? one further step is to disable your firewall(s) to see if that changes anything, obviously this is very risky.

 

bloody good point bronson, why didn't i think of that

 

I think I've tried everything and I haven't been able to fix it. Does anyone know of a product that records everything your comp is doing? Maybe I can catch it that way.

 

I post this to death, but for good reasons.

This thread is definitely worth checking out. (pssst - you're supposed to before asking for help anyway). Not that that really matters to me. I still recommend this thread.

Then, follow up by following the directions in this thread . This will make sure you're free from malware (not just spyware), and will help prevent further outbreaks. This also eliminates malware as a suspect.

Cheers!