Hello,
first of all I don't know if this is the right section to ask, but I have been feeling rather paranoid as of late and would very much appreciate your help.
I am using Windows 7 and have just recently started experiencing strange activity on my computer. I'm talking about... every day since 3-4 days ago.
Over the past couple of days, I have experienced an increased amount of programs opening and closing in the background (blank windows that I can't really track down, sometimes blank icons in the task bar which open to the left side of my currently open programs instead of the normal right), there have been multiple instances of my computer making the "new device found" sound without anything happening, and there had been plenty of times where my computer would simply freeze, or at least my mouse and keyboard would stop working/responding and I'd be forced to do a soft reset on it. What makes me feel like it's a hardware/software fault is that one time all my windows went black for no apparent reason and I had to reset my computer.
I checked my input devices and my USB ports and they seem to be fine, so that can't be the case, even though I would often find my open windows and mouse cursor in a different way where I had left them.
I tried scanning with MSE and Malwarebytes Anti-malware, but nothing malicious had been found. I checked my computer for RATs and paid attention to what files were being created, and nothing.
No one has physical access to my computer, so I do not understand whether it's just my computer messing up or if there has been a security breach.
Additional info: My firewall settings and router ports are as I left them, none of my accounts seem to be running on other services. My system settings don't seem to have been tampered with, though my computer does not want to enter sleep mode for some reason. Yesterday when I started Opera, it had different settings than I had set, but I don't know if it was part of an update or something.
If you need any other information is scans, feel free to let me know. I am worried about this computer as it's the first one I built myself and I've never been disappointed or had any problems in the two and a half years I had it.
Edit: I think it also goes without saying that I haven't installed any new software, which only deepens my confusion.
first of all I don't know if this is the right section to ask, but I have been feeling rather paranoid as of late and would very much appreciate your help.
I am using Windows 7 and have just recently started experiencing strange activity on my computer. I'm talking about... every day since 3-4 days ago.
Over the past couple of days, I have experienced an increased amount of programs opening and closing in the background (blank windows that I can't really track down, sometimes blank icons in the task bar which open to the left side of my currently open programs instead of the normal right), there have been multiple instances of my computer making the "new device found" sound without anything happening, and there had been plenty of times where my computer would simply freeze, or at least my mouse and keyboard would stop working/responding and I'd be forced to do a soft reset on it. What makes me feel like it's a hardware/software fault is that one time all my windows went black for no apparent reason and I had to reset my computer.
I checked my input devices and my USB ports and they seem to be fine, so that can't be the case, even though I would often find my open windows and mouse cursor in a different way where I had left them.
I tried scanning with MSE and Malwarebytes Anti-malware, but nothing malicious had been found. I checked my computer for RATs and paid attention to what files were being created, and nothing.
No one has physical access to my computer, so I do not understand whether it's just my computer messing up or if there has been a security breach.
Additional info: My firewall settings and router ports are as I left them, none of my accounts seem to be running on other services. My system settings don't seem to have been tampered with, though my computer does not want to enter sleep mode for some reason. Yesterday when I started Opera, it had different settings than I had set, but I don't know if it was part of an update or something.
If you need any other information is scans, feel free to let me know. I am worried about this computer as it's the first one I built myself and I've never been disappointed or had any problems in the two and a half years I had it.
Edit: I think it also goes without saying that I haven't installed any new software, which only deepens my confusion.
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