I am not sure if this is a virus or not and desperate to find out. I have a Dell Inspiron 4100 and last week while just surfing the net, all of a sudden my cursor started having a life of its own. It automatically started moving to the top right corner of the screen and any input from the TouchPad was ignored, it would go straight back up into the corner. The next day it was ok, then that night it would start again, this time going to the bottom left hand corner. At one time when searching loading up the Dell Help program it went crazy like it doesn't want me to use that program. Over the past few days it has just got worse and worse. It reached a climax the other night when it started just racing around the screen clicking away at anything and everything, opening programs, closing them, the only way to stop it was to turn the computer off. It had opened about 30 programs at one stage. Although when I plugged an external mouse in (USB) it was ok, although it has started to not respond to the movement of that either. I have also rang Dell Tech Support, they upgraded by BIOS and updated my TouchPad drivers, but still it continues to go crazy. I have even ran the latest version of Norton Anitvirus updated last week and it didn't pick up anything. If anyone can help I would greatly appreciate it. I don't know if it is a virus of a hardware problem. Thanks...

Run an online virus scan at Panda or House Call, post back with results of the scan Good luck

A bloke at work said he has a program that will allow his PC to hack into another PC via the net and mess about with it, producing the symptions you mentioned. He may have just been telling a fairy tale but does this happen when you are not connected to the net ? If you unplug your PC from the telephone socket does it still happen ? I will ask him for the name of the program and try to find it or info on it via the net. In the mean time I would suggest getting a firewall which will allow you to dictate what is sent to and from your PC, which will defeat the above hacking. www.zonelabs.com have a free firewall program called Zone Alarm. I use this and would not dare go on the net without it. It reports how many times I have been scanned and tells me if my ports have been probed and blocks any such malicious activity etc.

you just may have a trojan horse in your system. but c'mon people, Panda or House Call ? really! do you now the percentage of false alarms panda gets in a scan ? and housecall... really, I use bitdefender and it's faster and it never failed me. I used kaspersky as backup but neaah! www.bitdefender.com

hi chrisR, to find out if you have a resident trojan go to www.thepublicworks.com security section and link to pcflank.com and do their trojan and open port test. if you are infected then go to wilders.org and download a free 30 day trial of Trojan Hunter and scan your machine. if you are using PC Anywhere diable it as someone has found out your IP address and is compromising your machine. if you don't have a firewall install any of the free versions listed at thepublicworks.com and stealth your ports, also you may want to download Regprot, a free registry monitor, and TDImon and Process Explorer, free port and process monitors from Sysinternals. all the best and hope this helps, murve

ya, I think that would be a trojan, but check to see if it still happens when your not connected to the internet

Thank you all for your replies. I ran a House Call online scan and that came up with the system being ok. I also downloaded the Zone Alarm firewall. I downloaded and ran that Trojan Hunter program as well, although it said no Trojan's weer found. Anyway, I will see how it goes. Michael2, it occured the most when I was at home with my Wireless Network card plugged in and once unplugged, it continues. Although, it rarely occurs when I am at work with a LAN cable plugged in...I don't understand. I'll see how it goes after doing what everyone has told me. Thanks again!