How can a computer start programs itself?

[frantically relaxing]

I've seen many weird computer things, but this morning was a new one--

My BIL who works in our basement shop, started his computer up as normal this morning. It's an old refurbished Compaq tower, XP, 40 gig drive, 1 gig ram, 2.8g no-frills processor. Used mostly to run Corel, his old engraving program, and some internet browsing...

While booting up, the engraving program, Corel, some Canon photo apps, Crap Cleaner, and about 5 other programs all self-started, the toolbar was full. The Canon program put several new icons on the desktop. CCleaner wanted to know if he wanted to download the newest update. His engraving program, which is an old DOS program, was running within a window-- normally it opens full screen, but regardless, how did a DOS program start itself? How did ANY of these programs start themselves??

I checked the web activity log, nothing funny showed up there. My wifi is password protected... We ran a virus scan, came out clean- I checked the all the event logs, other than Microsoft anti-malware updated itself, nothing out of the ordinary in the logs...

I'm assuming the anti-malware update may have had something to do with it, but how?

It's like someone else was in control of the computer, but...?

 

[eavega]

Re: How can a computer start programs itself?

Nope. Hidden somewhere in your standard OS startup programs is a string of commands that will start a program up as soon as the operating system initiates. Back in the XP days, I believe those programs are scripted in the command.com and config.sys files. A power user would typically script the starting of those programs, especially if it was something that always ran and took a while to boot up.

I'm pretty sure you are not looking at any malware based on that behavior.

Rgds

E

 

[Bayou Dave]

Re: How can a computer start programs itself?

In XP go to start, run, msconfig, enter. When it opens go to Startup and uncheck all programs you don't want to start when the computer is turned on. All the programs will still work when you open them from a icon, etc.

 

[Scott Danforth]

Re: How can a computer start programs itself?

I have everything that I like to open come up when the computer reboots on my XP machine.

 

[frantically relaxing]

Re: How can a computer start programs itself?

I'm not talking about background programs, startup programs or services, I'm talking "actual" programs that must be user-started...

I just went back to his computer to check something, and I didn't notice before, but every desktop icon he has, THOSE were the programs that were running, pretty much every one of them! Like, the mouse double-clicked every icon on the desktop all by itself!

I think I must have a ghost-- in between typing this I've been working, and speaking of DOS programs I was copying a vector file from DOS to my 1989 proprietary computer (Motorola processor, yay), when I noticed the DOS screen-- the cursor was zinging around the screen all by itself, and then my one big machine, which is driven by yet another DOS program that WASN'T RUNNING, started itself up, and the cutter head moved beyond the machine's limits and jammed. I shut down the machine, the cursor stopped moving around, and all is well again ... I guess..

 

[MTboatguy]

Re: How can a computer start programs itself?

Sounds like someone has infected your computers with the old DOS remote virus, it was quite prevalent for many years when Windows was first introduced, because the earlier copies of windows were actually graphical interfaces running in a DOS environment, we used to have fun, hacking into someones computer that we knew and then calling them up and telling them to watch their computer, where we would remotely open and close the CD drive, eject floppy's if they were inserted, change the colors on the screen and all kinds of goofy stuff.