On PC-exclusive rare diseases
There’s a virus on my PC and I cannot wipe it out,
There’s a virus on my PC and I cannot wipe it oooout
There a viruuuuus, there’s a viruuuuus,
There’s a virus on my PC and I cannot wipe it oooooout.
(sing to the tune of “Hay un barco en el fondo de la mar”)
Like the stupid song at the top of the page says, there’s a virus on my PC and (you guessed!) I cannot wipe it out. Why? Because no antivirus recognizes it. According to my antivirus programs, everything’s fine and dandy. Formatting my computer also doesn’t help; it seems to be a virus hidden on one of my favourite programs and as soon as I re-install them, it comes back. And since my antivirus programs don’t recognize there’s a virus in the first place, there’s no way to know which program it is.
If no antivirus recognizes it, why am I so sure that my PC is infected?
Well, the symptoms, of course. Some of them include:
1- It messes with my program icons. How? By chopping them in four parts and re-arranging them so that they don’t look anything like they’re supposed to (kind of like one of those square puzzles in which you have to move the pieces around). It will randomly revert them back to normal within a few hours... or not.
2- It messes with the audio, in several ways. Sometimes it will be one program that doesn’t play the audio, while the rest are unnafected. Sometimes, it will be all the programs that won’t have audio, even though the Window sounds (error, notification, and so on) still work perfectly. Sometimes the sounds will play only in the first program I open once I start my computer, and will keep doing so as long as I don’t close that program... closing it and opening again will result in no audio in that one, either.
3- It messes with my keyboard. I will be happily writing on Word one minute, and the next my keyboard will be reconfigured as an English keyboard, which has totally different keys from a Spanish one. But it’s only in Word... if I try the notepad or Firefox, everything will be normal. Occasionally, it will be the other way around. Restarting my computer brings everything back to normal in this case.
4- It messes with my mouse. For a while, everything will be fine, but then all of a sudden the pointer will go crazy and jump all over the place, and randomly register right or left clicking during the wild movements, so that programs will be closed, files deleted and/or moved to other folders in a matter of seconds (depending on what kind of windows I have open at the time).
Other times, the pointer will freeze for a few seconds, or won’t let me click on anything until I’ve done some weird random clicking on the wheel first.
Particularly annoying is when I’m playing The Sims2 and it keeps changing the camera angle without me clicking on anything first.
5- It freezes my computer when I’m least expecting it. And yes, I know that windows is unstable even wihtout the help of a virus or two, but this is blatantly on purpose. Like, it works just fine if I use only the mouse, but as soon as I touch a key on my keyboard it will freeze. I restart, and then it’s the same thing. And again. I turn it off and try again and the same thing. I wait a day or two and everything will go back to normal.
The worst part is that it isn’t consistent. Once I think I’ve found the way to bypass its effects, it’ll find a new and creative way to annoy me, or revert to one that hasn’t appeared in weeks.
All of these things are generally more annoying than they are damaging, but I’d really love it if I could kick it out of my beloved Mokona-Tachi’s system before it manages to make me go crazy. If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was one of those things you can get in ThinkGeek to play pranks on your co-workers.
Any ideas or suggestions?
There’s a virus on my PC and I cannot wipe it out,
There’s a virus on my PC and I cannot wipe it oooout
There a viruuuuus, there’s a viruuuuus,
There’s a virus on my PC and I cannot wipe it oooooout.
(sing to the tune of “Hay un barco en el fondo de la mar”)
Like the stupid song at the top of the page says, there’s a virus on my PC and (you guessed!) I cannot wipe it out. Why? Because no antivirus recognizes it. According to my antivirus programs, everything’s fine and dandy. Formatting my computer also doesn’t help; it seems to be a virus hidden on one of my favourite programs and as soon as I re-install them, it comes back. And since my antivirus programs don’t recognize there’s a virus in the first place, there’s no way to know which program it is.
If no antivirus recognizes it, why am I so sure that my PC is infected?
Well, the symptoms, of course. Some of them include:
1- It messes with my program icons. How? By chopping them in four parts and re-arranging them so that they don’t look anything like they’re supposed to (kind of like one of those square puzzles in which you have to move the pieces around). It will randomly revert them back to normal within a few hours... or not.
2- It messes with the audio, in several ways. Sometimes it will be one program that doesn’t play the audio, while the rest are unnafected. Sometimes, it will be all the programs that won’t have audio, even though the Window sounds (error, notification, and so on) still work perfectly. Sometimes the sounds will play only in the first program I open once I start my computer, and will keep doing so as long as I don’t close that program... closing it and opening again will result in no audio in that one, either.
3- It messes with my keyboard. I will be happily writing on Word one minute, and the next my keyboard will be reconfigured as an English keyboard, which has totally different keys from a Spanish one. But it’s only in Word... if I try the notepad or Firefox, everything will be normal. Occasionally, it will be the other way around. Restarting my computer brings everything back to normal in this case.
4- It messes with my mouse. For a while, everything will be fine, but then all of a sudden the pointer will go crazy and jump all over the place, and randomly register right or left clicking during the wild movements, so that programs will be closed, files deleted and/or moved to other folders in a matter of seconds (depending on what kind of windows I have open at the time).
Other times, the pointer will freeze for a few seconds, or won’t let me click on anything until I’ve done some weird random clicking on the wheel first.
Particularly annoying is when I’m playing The Sims2 and it keeps changing the camera angle without me clicking on anything first.
5- It freezes my computer when I’m least expecting it. And yes, I know that windows is unstable even wihtout the help of a virus or two, but this is blatantly on purpose. Like, it works just fine if I use only the mouse, but as soon as I touch a key on my keyboard it will freeze. I restart, and then it’s the same thing. And again. I turn it off and try again and the same thing. I wait a day or two and everything will go back to normal.
The worst part is that it isn’t consistent. Once I think I’ve found the way to bypass its effects, it’ll find a new and creative way to annoy me, or revert to one that hasn’t appeared in weeks.
All of these things are generally more annoying than they are damaging, but I’d really love it if I could kick it out of my beloved Mokona-Tachi’s system before it manages to make me go crazy. If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was one of those things you can get in ThinkGeek to play pranks on your co-workers.
Any ideas or suggestions?