Losing Application Focus - Hidden Program?

Psycho-Joe · Joined: Nov 04, 2003 Posts: 78

This seems to be an odd occurence, but as of yet nothing "bad" has happend, more annoyance than a problem really.

First of all, let me state that I havent installed anything lately that I could think of that would cause this to happen.

What is happening you ask?

There is a program or "something" that will randomly and intermittenly steal focus of whatever program I am currently running. Usually its a game I am playing, lol. I play my games in fullscreen mode, and it will just go to the desktop... as if I clicked on something to change the focus, but nothing was there.

I have checked Taskmanager's processes and applications and I see nothing out of the ordinary, although it could be possible something is running and has just named itself to a similar process.

Also, I will occasionally hear a clicking noise... the EXACT same clicking sound that internet explorer makes when refreshing/loading pages. So I am guessing maybe something has a "hidden" IE page open and is occasionally refreshing itself.

At one point I had an unrelated problem and it cause an odd "application" to stop responding (crash?). I was wondering if maybe this might be the culprit. It was called.....

BrowserAppPreviewWindow

I googled that and couldnt find any information on it. So any information anyone could provide about this and the odd behavior listed above, would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in Advance!

goretsky · Posted: Mon Feb 15, 2010 6:04 pm Post subject:

Hello,

Have you checked for malicious software? If so, was anything found?

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Psycho-Joe · Joined: Nov 04, 2003 Posts: 78

Yes, that was the first thing I did when the suspicious activity started.

Nothing was found.

I am not totally 100% sure, but I believe I have found the culprit. I was cleaning up my desktop and un-installing old programs, when I spotted the Yahoo Toolbar.

ICK, SPEW, PATOOIE!

I have no clue how it got onto my computer, I detest using ANYONE'S toolbar, regardless who made it, trusted or not.

When I do install programs I absolutely make sure that I uncheck any option to install a toolbar, so its quite a mystery how it got onto my computer. I am also the only user of this PC, and besides no one else in my house is tech savvy enough to even know how to use it.

I havent seen and mysterious activity as of yet, but I havent been looking for it either. So as far as I am concerned, everything is taken care of.

zlim · Joined: Mar 11, 2005 Posts: 2747

Check when you update Java. Yahoo toolbar is checked as to be installed! Maybe that's how it rode into your computer.
Sun just updated to Java 6 update 20, be sure you are up to date.