# Reverse Caps Lock, Clicking Links Open New Windows - And Other Shenanigans... Virus?



## XP4Life

Last night, I experienced a strange series of occurences on my computer (Windows XP/Compaq Presario) that had inadvertently ended - and I am not sure if it will resume - or perhaps even turn into something worse.

I think I might have picked it up while doing research on some websites for proposition bets for the upcoming Super Bowl. I noticed when I was typing, that I was doing so in all caps - even though my Caps Lock was disabled.

When I enabled Caps Lock, it then started typing all lower case letters.

Other keyboard symptoms: the period and the comma were not available, only able to type > or < with or without the Shift key. Also, the Shift key didn't work with most keys for characters. There were also issues in selecting text in a field.

Another nuisance during this period is that when I clicked on a link, it would open up a new browser window, as opposed to the link opening in the same window. I thought this problem was exclusive to Firefox (the browser I was using at the time this all started) but I also opened up Internet Explorer and found out that this was happening there, too.

Frustrated, I restarted the computer. I made sure no keys were stuck. When I rebooted, it appeared I was still experiencing these weird symptoms. I had double clicked on an icon on my desktop, it had selected more than one icon and opened the first one to the right.

I immediately ran Spybot. Surprisingly, during the run, it appeared that thes symptoms spontaneously discontinued, because as I was struggling in writing an email, I discovered that my period worked, and the letters were typing normally, and so forth. Although one scary development prior to that was there were a few keys that had randomly typed as a capital letter while I was in "lower case mode"! I wonder if my computer is possessed!

Good news, for now, is that a Spybot search found nothing major, and an Anti-Malware scan turned up empty.

However, I heard from someone who was on the receiving end of the above message I was writing. He informed me that he was experiencing the same series of odd events, two days in a row, and the third day, all hell broke loose.

I guess my question is, what should I do if I find myself typing the wrong characters again today?

And has anyone else experienced this problem? The more people know about this, the better!


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## Hedgehunter

I have this problem too, occasionally. I don't believe it's a virus. My PC is well fortified with Kaspersky. But it's only been happening since I started using the Hibernate mode instead of shutting down my PC. I think it might have something to do with that. A healthy reboot usually flushes away the problem for a few days, (But you need to click on Restart while holding down the SHIFT key, otherwise it won't reboot when it's in this "possessed" state).

I'm using Windows XP (2002 edition) SP2


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## truebluexxx

If it wasn't for hedgehunter saying his problem goes away after a restart, I would say your keyboard has a fault. All the symptoms you mentioned can be duplicated by holding down the shift key


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## rbalaji

There is an accessibility option called sticky keys that can duplicate your problems by making shift, ctrl and alt behave like lock keys (so instead of pressing ctrl + mouse-click, if you clicked ctrl at some time in the past, all your mouse-clicks will behave like ctrl-mouse clicks, for instance). Press and hold shift down for 8 seconds and you will get a prompt whether to enable or disable sticky keys. Choose to disable it and the symptoms should go away. It may also be turned on by pressing shift key 5 times in a row. I am not sure what the relationship is between Filterkeys and stickykeys, but your symptoms are caused by one or both of them.


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## Hedgehunter

This works for me:

Go to Windows Start
Go to "turn Off Computer"
Hover over "Hibernate" and hold down the shift key.
But don't click on it.
Hibernate changes to Stand By and the problem goes away!


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