Button-switch while surfing

[Mark]

Lately, I've been having problems with Internet Explorer
seeming to change each buttons' function in the midst of
surfing. For instance, during an IE session, suddenly the
TAB button, instead of moving the cursor to a different
part of the screen, now toggles back and forth between
open windows. Backspace, instead of deleting text, now
moves my browser back 1 page. The wheel-button on my
mouse, instead of scrolling up and down the page, now
changes the size of the text on the page. Other features
fail to work altogether - typing anything in a box on a
web page no longer works, copying & pasting via shortcut
keys no longer works, and when I click on a page with my
left mouse key, all of the text on the page is highlighted.

The only connection I see with these errors occuring is
when a pop-up ad appears. Shortly after certain ads
appear, the problems begin, but there seems to be no rhyme
or reason to what ads trigger the problems (since most ads
don't). The problem is solved (temporarily) by exiting IE
and re-loading it, but that is a short-term and annoying
fix, especially when you have to do it every 5 minutes.

Anybody know a fix for this, to keep my buttons doing the
proper thing at all times?

 

[H Leboeuf]

Check for this parasite.

WurldMedia
http://www.doxdesk.com/parasite/WurldMedia.html

Problems: The redirect mechanism used by this software breaks the web
browser's 'back' button in some variants.

 

[Robert Aldwinckle]

TAB button, instead of moving the cursor to a different

part of the screen, now toggles back and forth between
open windows.

Check your keyboard for a stuck Alt- key.

One simple test is to open a command window
and start typing in the command-line.
If when you type a space the window menu opens
that would be consistent with the idea that an Alt- key
was sticking. To unstick it you may only need to press
the alternate Alt- key. E.g. if you know that you may have
help down the right-Alt- key before the symptom started occurring
press the left-Alt- key to try to end the symptom. A similar problem
with different symptoms can occur when the other key modifiers
(e.g. Shift-, Ctrl-, etc.) stick. Using a Command window's command
line is a good diagnostic for identifying those cases too. Fortunately,
I have never seen a situation where more than one key was sticking
at the same time. Untangling such compound cases might be tricky.


HTH

Robert Aldwinckle