Something Stealing App Focus Hourly

K

Kael_Sidhe

Every hour something steals focus twice from whatever app I'm working
in. I think it's related to IE or something is using IE.

I have a clicking sound tied to the Explorer "Start Navigation" program
event. Every hour I will hear 4 of those clicks regardless of what I'm
working in or have open.

Focus does not seem to shift TO anything, it just shifts AWAY from
whatever I'm on. If I am quick enough and grab focus back during the
first 2 clicks it will steal focus again during the last 2 clicks. If
I wait until all the clicks have completed and then grab focus back, I
will be fine. Every hour this sequence repeats.

Another pertinent fact is that the focus-stealer does not run at the
same time every time. It runs exactly 1 hour after my last reboot and
every hour from that point on. If I reboot again then once again it
runs exactly 1 hour later and every hour from that point on. This
leads me to believe it's some background process with an internal timer
rather than a scheduled task.

This started several months ago. I am running (and have been running)
current McAfee, Spybot S&D, and Ad-Aware. I have no scheduled tasks in
my Scheduled Tasks window. I have looked up every single process
running in my background and according to liutilities.com they are all
valid processes for the apps I have installed. I've reviewed every
single service that is running and they all SEEM to be ok but I don't
know that I would really be able to spot a rogue. I keep my task bar
clean and I regularly clean up uneccessary background process trash
that new apps try to install.

I'm thinking that a process is running invisibly or something has
commandeered a valid Windows process.

Please help! At this point I suspect some sort of spyware that is
"phoning home". Any and all advice is welcome.
 
M

Maurice N ~ MVP

I recommend an article at Aumha.org on ways to cleanup parasites.
Follow the quick-fix protocol.
http://aumha.org/a/quickfix.htm

Here are 2 tools from SysInternals that may help you get an insight on
what's running.
Autoruns (checks & shows what's set to auto-load at Windows startup)
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/autoruns.shtml

Process Explorer http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/procexp.shtml

You likely will have to do cleanups in Safe mode, once you have downloaded
current definitions.
You should even use Safe Mode with Networking to do all this work.
Press F8 Function key as the pc is booting up so that you can see bootup
choices.
 
B

bumtracks

Every hour something steals focus twice from whatever app I'm working
in. I think it's related to IE or something is using IE.
Just a guess, sure sounds like a 1hr lease renewal on you DHCP connection ?
and maybe you have mouse set to Smart move to current application ?
 

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