Desktop Icons go crazy when I click on one...

[Klunker]

Very puzzled...

Windows XP Home, SP2 on a homebuilt system, Soyo MB (can't quickly come up with the model number, sorry), P4 2.8 ghz, 512 mg memory

Yesterday briefly and then this morning for a while this is what was happening:

After bootup--which happened with some strange beeps, usually just hear one but this time heard several--desktop looked normal, BUT, when I clicked on one icon a bunch of other icons started highlighting in rapid succession. This went on for maybe two seconds, then an applicaton other than the one I clicked on started up. If I opened the programs list by using the start menu, same effect--rapid-fire highlighting of various programs, try to click on one and something else opens. Same kind of thing if I opened a Windows explorer window...the whole "tree" goes nuts. Also, if anything with a cursor in it opens up, such as a blank MS word document or a "rename Icon" box, it fills up with an infinite string of "m"'s...mmmmmmmmmmm...like that.

Okay, I'm thinking virus. I've had zero problems with viruses...I run AVG free, and the computer accesses the internet through a router. In about 1.5 years of operation AVG has moved 4 "possibly infected" files to the virus vault, none of which caused any problem (none that I noticed, at least). After a lot of crazy clicking around I managed to get the AVG control center open and started a virus scan. It ran for over an hour and finished, reporting no viruses detected. BUT...after 20 or 30 minutes I minimized the control center screen to see what was happening, and found that things were back to normal...except for a couple of icons that had been renamed "mmmmmmmmmmmmm"....which I was then able to rename back to their original names with no problem. The virus scan continued and finished and now all seems fine. I've rebooted several times and I now hear just the one normal beep and XP seems to be working fine.

I am of course happy to have things working, but would like to know what was going on in case the problem comes back. Yesterday the "mmmmmmmm" problem popped up in the middle of a session but suddenly went away after a few minutes...and I can't say whether or not the AVG scan had anything to do with it's apparent resolution this morning.

One other thing I did was delete the "normal.dot" file in MS word. I did this because when Word opend and I got the mmmmmmmmmmmm thing going, it flashed me a message about the "normal.dot" file being changed, did I want to save changes? Thought that might be something so I deleted it.

If anyone has seen anything like this or has any ideas, I would be glad to hear what you think.

Thanks

Dave

[crossedup]

Sounds like you have a stuck key on your keyboard, start there. Usually causes things to act very bizarre like that.

[Klunker]

I've messed with the "m" key...so far it has not gotten stuck when I play with it...strings of "m"'s when I hold it down, but it stops when I release the key. I can try a different keyboard, but as the problem is not active at the moment, I will wait to see if it returns before I swap.

Thanks for the reply

Dave

[crossedup]

Might just not be the M key, ive had a couple calls in the past where the Ctl key was stuck, that causes really wierd things because it has differant functions in differant programs.

I hadnt heard of a virus that does that but anything is possible.