Keyboard and all sorts of other PC issues

[ricko_uk]

Hi,
since few months ago the PC started behaving weirdly. Initially minor things then more and more. I cannot reinstall it because of some software I cannot find the serial number of and the company is not in business anymore. I always had full antivirus and ran full test several times but it shows there's nothing there. I also only visit well known and reliable websites only.

Since maybe 2-3 weeks ago it stated rampin up with all sorts of insane behaviour like apps starting by themselves, youtube continuosly reverting to 480p, every app extremely slow, file explorer running at very high CPU usage (20 to 40%) even when all apps are closed and dropbox is fully synched. USB devices disconnecting and reconnecting all by themselves. And the list goes on and on.

Then since few days ago the keyboard started disconnecting every few minutes and/or autotyping. The the blue screen hapened several times.

I tried uninstalling the latest updates and that seemed to have sorted the blue screen. But the keyboard I have to continuously unplug and plug back in which is insane.

Fort he first time it shows multiple (5) keyboards in device manager (it always only showed a single keyboard). I uninstalled the driver, updated it, ran keyboard fix (which showed all along that the best driver is already installed).

Any suggestions on how to fix at least he keyboard?

Thank you

[edy]

Seems like very odd behaviour. I wonder if the keyboard is messed up and randomly typing stuff, which may be launching programs or sending out strange keyboard combinations that are causing odd window behaviour. If you want to isolate it to the keyboard, maybe try another keyboard? Get a good known working keyboard and plug it in and see if that resolves the problem... and maybe take the suspected "bad" keyboard and try it on another computer and see what happens?

Let us know the result and we can continue to trouble-shoot from there. Good luck!

[ricko_uk]

Thank you Edy,
that was my first thought and tried a brand new one. But not much difference. Also the caps lock started being inverted. So it needs to be ON for the letters to be lower case.

Not to mention several USB devices disconnecting and reconnecting while thye are not even being used (like the ICD4, Jlink segger, webcam, usb mic).

Any other suggestions?

Are there more powerful virus checker than Kaspersky? Could a virus have caused that?

I'm asking because other weird things also have been happening for a while. For example on Farnell and Parcel2Go websites suddenly I cannot change the delivery address or other details, when clicking on those buttons they just refresh the page and remain on the same page. The VPN shows connected while windows shows no network/internet. Sites like youtube often do not load or play very slow (I have very fast broadband).

Not to mention Chrome/Google that keeps asking for the Captcha multiple times a day (that happens on my phone too).

Chrome also showing 50+ windows open in task manager when there is only one (and only 5 plugins installed). Creating a folder sometimes takes 20-30 seconds. Office apps closing themselves when I am not even using them (they are just in the background on another display). Some websites log out within seconds of loggin in.

Thank you

[newbrain]

My first idea was a defective keyboard or mouse - but you ruled the keyboard out and the mouse is new, IIRC.
Second suspect might be RAM going bad, but I'd rather expect many crashes (both applications and system) in that case.

You might try scanning with malwarebytes, it sometimes catches stuff other AVs don't see.

Next step is probably this

[edy]

I would try to isolate this to a hardware or software issue. One way to check is boot up a live Linux distro and see if it behaves similarly. Do you a "live CD" or "live USB" that you can boot up from? For example, something like this:

https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/try-ubuntu-before-you-install#1-getting-started

If it is still behaving erratically then I would guess it to be something with the hardware. A fresh clean live USB or DVD should function perfectly if the hardware is ok. If something is wrong on your motherboard, memory, or something is up with chipset or certain controllers, it may be creating glitches.

If you find the hardware is ok, then it is your Windows installation that is messed up and it may be very difficult to track down the culprit especially if you said virus checkers are showing no results. However, since you mentioned that the reason you don't want to just wipe the machine and start fresh is that there is some special software you use that you no longer have the key for.... You need to ask yourself, if my computer dies (e.g. hard drive failure), then what will you do? Are any alternatives available?

Perhaps while you have a chance, try to figure out how to copy the software over to another machine and see if it will still run (copy all files, registry key entries, etc). Meanwhile if your hardware is bad... you will have to start swapping out components one by one to see if it resolves the problem. You may have no choice but to move your hard drive over to another machine and try to get Windows to boot on it without complaining too much. Either way it will put an end to your use of the special software that you no longer can get a license key for.

Easiest step now is just boot off good media like a live USB/DVD and see if you get same problem, which may help isolate it to either hardware or software. Good luck!

[newbrain]

Very good advice from Edy.

A first step could also be checking the memory with the test provided with Windows.

Hitting the windows key and writing "Memory diagnostic" it should find it.

It will reboot the machine and run a selectable number of tests with a text interface (it uses very little RAM for itself).
Errors will show during the test and a report will be given when Windows is rebooted.

[ricko_uk]

Thank you Edy and Newbrain

I will start doing some of those checks.

After your suggestion I have looking into malwarebytes. From what I have been reading it Malwarebytes used to be a second line of defence (i.e. not a full blown antivirus) and to be added on-top of your antivirus. But the latest version apparently is a full blown antivirus. How safe is it to install that if you already have an antivirus installed?

Are there risks of it clogging up the system with two full antivirus and slowing the PC down or worst creating some conflicts?

Is there a way of installing only the non-antivirus version of Malwarebytes?

thank you again!

[Microdoser]

My first thought when a PC acts weird is to check the power supply. I cannot count the times I have had a PC that acts odd, crashes to blue screens, loses device connections etc and after checking everything else (run software diagnostics first of course, as said above) I find that a power supply replacement removes all problems.

If you do suspect a virus, run Malwarebytes, combifix (if it is valid for your version of windows) and every online virus checker you can. Download offline virus checkers and run those. There are not many viruses out there that will not be spotted by MalwareBytes+Combifix especially if you run a couple of online and offline virus checkers (by offline I mean ones that you burn to a USB stick or DVD and boot from so windows does not load).

One way to check if there is a malicious entity doing these things is: Do they still happen when you are not connected to the Internet? If they still do then it is not someone else who does things with your PC.

If none of those find anything, I would check your power supply. If you have one, swap it out for a known good supply. Poor quality power can manifest in many many odd ways with a PC.

Reseat all your cards, connectors, and socketed items, download something (like CoreTemp) that will let you check temperatures on your CPU, GPU, and motherboard.

Good luck!

[ricko_uk]

Thank you Microdoser,

I tried looking up combifix (it shows results for combofix) but on their website it says it is not compatible with Win 10.

When it is connected to the internet the Ethernet usage/trasnfer-rate goes up by a lot despite no applications open and dropbox fully synced. Also file explorer runs at very high percentage CPU. When I unplug it it does go down to less than 1% and ethernet usage obviously to nothing. Another weird thing I noticed is that when I switch task manager to the foreground (it was already open) suddenly all CPU usage and ethernet graphs drops drammatically (and can still see the history up to that point - i.e. seconds previously - being much much higher). And the program I had in foreground moments before was only Word with a blank document or notepad or other "tiny" non-memory-consuming programs which could not be the reason for large resources usage moments before - an no other progam open (other than one or two of those).

Few more things to try. If anybody has other suggestions please do share them.

Thank you

[Kleinstein]

When windows is downloading an update it can slow down the computer a lot. Even after down-load but before installation it can be awfully slow.

Word, even if not active may do some background tasks, like updating an index. If this is something living on the dropbox it may also slow down the web interface. Worst case would be a swap file on a remote disk.
Windows  can be a bit unpredictable. So the test with a live linux is defenitely a good idea. There are also some virus checkers coming as a live linux system, that could be used for this.

An active virus checker running berserk (testing too many files) could also be a problem.

[Microdoser]

Thank you Microdoser,

I tried looking up combifix (it shows results for combofix) but on their website it says it is not compatible with Win 10.

When it is connected to the internet the Ethernet usage/trasnfer-rate goes up by a lot despite no applications open and dropbox fully synced. Also file explorer runs at very high percentage CPU. When I unplug it it does go down to less than 1% and ethernet usage obviously to nothing. Another weird thing I noticed is that when I switch task manager to the foreground (it was already open) suddenly all CPU usage and ethernet graphs drops drammatically (and can still see the history up to that point - i.e. seconds previously - being much much higher). And the program I had in foreground moments before was only Word with a blank document or notepad or other "tiny" non-memory-consuming programs which could not be the reason for large resources usage moments before - an no other progam open (other than one or two of those).

Few more things to try. If anybody has other suggestions please do share them.

Thank you

I have had issues like that with the automatic indexing service. It indexes all the files on your computer, so you can search quicker, but in reality it just clogs up your computer and makes it run really slowly all the time.

If nothing else works, try turning that off.

[ricko_uk]

Thank you Kleinstein and Microdoser, few more things to try

[james_s]

Are there risks of it clogging up the system with two full antivirus and slowing the PC down or worst creating some conflicts?

That will almost definitely cause problems if there are two antivirus programs running in the background, they can conflict and cause unpredictable behavior. Antivirus software in general is far from perfect and some will argue that the false sense of security it can provide outweighs the benefits you get from having it. Some AV packages will detect some viruses but not others, there is no one "best" one.

If I were in your position I think I would try booting a Linux live CD and see if the hardware behaves reasonably while running that.

[jc101]

When my last office/lab PC was playing up I imported/converted it into a virtual machine.  Running that virtual machine on another PC showed the OS etc. was fine and it was some kind of hardware issue.  I ended up building a new machine as it was a few years old so combined it with an upgrade.  I just run up the VM of the old one when I need to use the software I couldn't reinstall.

It's also worth checking all the fans are running OK, and none of the heatsinks is clogged up too.

[LateLesley]

If you've ruled out viruses, and hardware problems, It might be worth running the System file checker, which will at least check that the windows OS files are intact, and not compromised.

To do this, I think you need a CMD window with administrator permission, and then run SFC /SCANNOW. It takes a wee while to go through and check all the system, but I think it might be worth trying.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/using-system-file-checker-in-windows-10-365e0031-36b1-6031-f804-8fd86e0ef4ca

Then maybe after that, it might be worth running another virusscan.

TO give you another option, I sometimes use trendmicro's housecall if I'm fixing machines with no AV.

https://www.trendmicro.com/en_gb/forHome/products/housecall.html

It might also be worth looking to see if it is a rootkit messing with your system, and I found this one that malwarebytes does.

https://www.malwarebytes.com/antirootkit/

I hope some of these tools might help you find the issue.

Also the other previous advice you've had about checking the PSU, Memory, Keyboard, different OS etc, is all solid advice. Problems like these are tricky to pin down, and it can take a lot of time to trace it. Just follow through things logically though, and you should find the root of the problem.

One more check I will add in, if your machine is a few years old, don't forget to check the BIOS battery. Its an often overlooked thing which if it is low, might be low enough to cause niggles, but not enough to loose the BIOS time or trigger battery warnings. So it's worth checking it is good with a multimeter. Just remember to save your bios settings first, as you may have to redo them.

Good luck in finding the fault.

[ricko_uk]

Thank you all for the additional suggestions, much appreciated!!

I did check the bios and battery. But will try all the other suggestions.

[Microdoser]

Let us know how you go

[ricko_uk]

Thank you Microdoser, will do.

The latest thing I noticed is 7 instances of Dropbox in task manager and no icon in the windows tray (in the taskbar) and when I launch the dropbox app nothing happens, it does not start, despite the 7 processes running.

Will post the update once solved in case others might need it.

Thank you all as always!

[cdev]

Knopix LiveDVD is what I keep around for this kind of thing. It has a huge number of apps thatwill allow youo see if your hardware is working in a fairly vanilla properly configued generic Linux environment.

Distrowatch.com can be used to find all sorts of LiveDVDs.

I would try to isolate this to a hardware or software issue. One way to check is boot up a live Linux distro and see if it behaves similarly. Do you a "live CD" or "live USB" that you can boot up from? For example, something like this:

https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/try-ubuntu-before-you-install#1-getting-started

If it is still behaving erratically then I would guess it to be something with the hardware. A fresh clean live USB or DVD should function perfectly if the hardware is ok. If something is wrong on your motherboard, memory, or something is up with chipset or certain controllers, it may be creating glitches.

If you find the hardware is ok, then it is your Windows installation that is messed up and it may be very difficult to track down the culprit especially if you said virus checkers are showing no results. However, since you mentioned that the reason you don't want to just wipe the machine and start fresh is that there is some special software you use that you no longer have the key for.... You need to ask yourself, if my computer dies (e.g. hard drive failure), then what will you do? Are any alternatives available?

Perhaps while you have a chance, try to figure out how to copy the software over to another machine and see if it will still run (copy all files, registry key entries, etc). Meanwhile if your hardware is bad... you will have to start swapping out components one by one to see if it resolves the problem. You may have no choice but to move your hard drive over to another machine and try to get Windows to boot on it without complaining too much. Either way it will put an end to your use of the special software that you no longer can get a license key for.

Easiest step now is just boot off good media like a live USB/DVD and see if you get same problem, which may help isolate it to either hardware or software. Good luck!

If a good LiveDVD doesnt help you track down the problems, maybe you do need an Exorcist.

[ricko_uk]

Thank you Cdev
I haven't used Linux on almost 20 years so I am leaving those test using Linux for last.

Thank you as always!

[james_s]

It doesn't matter if you've never used Linux before at all, the whole point of the Live DVD is for novices to get a taste of it. You pop in the disc, the computer boots up off it and you get a desktop with a bunch of preinstalled software that all just works. Boot it up, open a word processor, text editor or some other application and see if it works, no OS-specific skills required. You shouldn't save it for last, it should be the very first thing you try before bothering with anything else, because it's one of the easiest things you can do and it will tell you very quickly with reasonable certainty whether the problem is software or hardware.

[ricko_uk]

Thank you James,
I just had a look at it and it is pretty neat! Nothing to do with what I remembered Linux to be like.

[LateLesley]

Linux has actually come a long way, to the point I've made the jump and use it as a daily driver. I even have Steam and run games on it. In my case, I quite like Linux Mint, with the cinnamon desktop. I've found it to be the easiest distro to get to grips with, being an ex windows user. Its allowed me to have a working system, while learning the Linux way of doing stuff on the command line. Most things can be done and maintained from the GUI in Linux Mint, which is great for newbies to Linux.

But there's a lot of good Distro's out there, and it's worth trying a few till you find one that fits.

[cdev]

Thank you Cdev
I haven't used Linux on almost 20 years so I am leaving those test using Linux for last.

Thank you as always!

I could never use Windows, the way it tries to take over my computing experience. I don't trust it one bit.

[ricko_uk]

Update...
I am still in the middle of trying all the suggestions you offered. But using the Linux Mint the USB issues seem to not appear. But that onyl confirmed it was not the keyboard. But it cannot rule out it was some malware especially given that the USB peripehrals keep conecting and disconnecting and most of the time reconneting shortly after (in Windows) but I cannot see which ones (unless it is the keyboard because it stops typing).

Is there a way or an app to log which USB peripheral connects and disconnect? Like a USB log app?

not a power issue (not enough current because I tried pluggin them directly intot he PC and still happened and beside they take much less current that the USB allows.

But the most bizarre thing happened 20 minutes ago when I was on Facebook and in the span of 10 minutes I liked a couple of posts. Then went to like a third one and suddenly a message popped up and said to I cannot like because the account has been locked (when it wasn't few minutes earlier) because apparently they have seen unusual activity (despite me using it like I always have done). Then it prompted me to create a new password but without the second entry to confirm it. At that point I thought it might somehow be a fake page but all along the secure icon was on and the URL was facebook.com.
As if those two things were not weird enough after I created that new password, it asked few questions (see below) and then promted me again to create a new password but this time display the screen you would normally expect when changing password (asking for old password and the new one and confirmation of the new one).

And on top of all that, all the infos the FB thought might have been changed by someone else and prompted me to check/confirm if they were mine, were actually mine, so nothing was changed (according to those few potential ones that FB prompted me about).

Questions:
- can a secure icon be displayed in the browser (chrome) and the URL of FB be there but instead not be a FB page (referring to the password change page)?
- what else can it be to cause all those things?

Thank you all as usual!!