Undetectable Virus

[itman 1,659]

33 minutes ago, tjg79 said:

I think I'll also uninstall and reinstall Firefox.

Another possible culprit is FireFox's hardware acceleration feature.

Problems with it usually manifest as graphics driver issues that cause web pages to become corrupted and the like: https://support.mozilla.org/bm/questions/1208168 . You could disable hardware acceleration temporarily and see if the erratic PC behavior you are experiencing disappears.

Edited January 4, 2020 by itman

[Marcos 5,074]

2 hours ago, ram1220 said:

Malwarebytes can find malware that Eset can not find.

I respectfully disagree. MBAM typically ranks lower than ESET in tests and from my personal experience if it detects something that ESET doesn't it's something that is not subject to detection, e.g. benign registry values, folders left after malware infection or PUA, etc.

[itman 1,659]

The only AV lab I could find that tests MBAM is AV-Test: https://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/home-windows/

It didn't score well either in protection or performance categories. I certainly would not use it as my real-time AV protection.

 

[peteyt 393]

4 hours ago, Marcos said:

I respectfully disagree. MBAM typically ranks lower than ESET in tests and from my personal experience if it detects something that ESET doesn't it's something that is not subject to detection, e.g. benign registry values, folders left after malware infection or PUA, etc.

 

3 hours ago, itman said:

The only AV lab I could find that tests MBAM is AV-Test: https://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/home-windows/

It didn't score well either in protection or performance categories. I certainly would not use it as my real-time AV protection.

 

I think the problem is, although I could be wrong with this, there used to be antivirus and anti malware software with antivirus programs back in the day mainly focused on viruses. Malwarebytes did at some point appear to find stuff others didn't although that could just be people thinking it did. These days antiviruses do generally protect against all types of malware. I've also heard from a lot of past users who found malwarebytes has became not as good in the last few years. I did until last year use both eset and malwarebytes as I had a lifetime license (never had any issues but I know it's not recommended - stopped using it when I was trying to troubleshoot something).

As mentioned as well by Marcos each AV has their own criteria for things such as PUAs

As for the original poster had removing Firefox fixed the issue? I'm reluctant to say that it doesn't sound like a virus if you are trying multiple programs and nothing is being detected. Either that or it is a brand new virus that is very hard to detect but I do think there is something else that is causing the issue - so far the issue seems to be just causing random annoyance rather than doing anything that would appear to be malicious 

Edited January 5, 2020 by peteyt

[ram1220 3]

21 hours ago, Marcos said:

I respectfully disagree. MBAM typically ranks lower than ESET in tests and from my personal experience if it detects something that ESET doesn't it's something that is not subject to detection, e.g. benign registry values, folders left after malware infection or PUA, etc.

And you have that right. I respectfully disagree with you.

[ram1220 3]

20 hours ago, itman said:

The only AV lab I could find that tests MBAM is AV-Test: https://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/home-windows/

It didn't score well either in protection or performance categories. I certainly would not use it as my real-time AV protection.

 

I never said to use it as a real-time AV protection. I said to run it because it will find things that Eset will not find. I stand by that statement as that is my experience working on PC's.

[Marcos 5,074]

47 minutes ago, ram1220 said:

I never said to use it as a real-time AV protection. I said to run it because it will find things that Eset will not find. I stand by that statement as that is my experience working on PC's.

The fact that a particular AV detects more than ESET doesn't make it better. Rogue applications also find a lot of issues even on clean operating system and it doesn't make them better, quite the contrary.

If you think that ESET has missed a threat, feel free to submit MBAM's quarantine to samples[at]eset.com and we'll most likely confirm that the object is not subject to detection.

[tjg79 3]

This is just an update. I haven't removed and reinstalled the Firefox browser yet, because it hasn't been acting up yet today.

If this was a hardware issue, I would expect it to be more consistent. Therefore, I think this is a malware, defective update, or corrupted application.

[itman 1,659]

1 hour ago, tjg79 said:

If this was a hardware issue, I would expect it to be more consistent.

Just the opposite.

Most computer hardware does not fail or manifests consistent behavior when failing or other issues exist. Rather hardware issues are in most cases are a gradual decline in functionality. This is the main reason malfunctioning hardware is very difficult to diagnosis in many cases. For example I had a hard drive that recently failed completely. Prior to the failure, I had intermittent system issues that existed for some time. Once I replaced the failed drive, those issues have never reappeared. Another example is hardware IRQ conflict issues. In many cases, the device with intermittent issues will function normally until another hardware device happens to use the the same IRQ.

On the other hand, malware is fairly consistent in its behavior since in many cases it is run at system startup. Additionally, malware has no interest in hijacking your mouse cursor and the like. Finally, you've run multiple anti-malware scans using multiple anti-malware products and none of them have found anything malicious on your notebook. Therefore, it is a more than a reasonable conclusion to state your PC does not contain any malware.

Edited January 5, 2020 by itman

[tjg79 3]

This is all new hardware. I know that that doesn't positively rule out a hardware issue, but, in my opinion, it makes it less likely than a software issue.

I've experienced hardware issues before, and this appears to be a software issue, because I've observed the erratic behavior without touching the hardware. I think that observation indicates a software issue has a higher probability of being the culprit.

The system was working flawlessly for six weeks.

At the moment, I suspect the Firefox browser software, but I have some reservations, because the erratic behavior wasn't limited to the open browser or even just the Firefox browser.

I haven't experienced any issue today yet. If it starts acting up again, I'll post my observations.

[tjg79 3]

A new, minor update, Geforce driver was just installed. The old driver could have been the culprit.

 

[itman 1,659]

26 minutes ago, tjg79 said:

A new, minor update, Geforce driver was just installed. The old driver could have been the culprit.

I had problems with FireFox's hardware acceleration feature prior to ver. 70 being introduced in regards to my existing nVidia graphics driver. Unfortunately, a driver update was not possible since my graphics card is no longer supported. Tried all known fixes to the problem with no success. Once FF ver. 70 came out, I haven't had an issue since.

Another example of a hardware to software issue.

[tjg79 3]

10 minutes ago, itman said:

I had problems with FireFox's hardware acceleration feature prior to ver. 70 being introduced in regards to my existing nVidia graphics driver. Unfortunately, a driver update was not possible since my graphics card is no longer supported. Tried all known fixes to the problem with no success. Once FF ver. 70 came out, I haven't had an issue since.

Another example of a hardware to software issue.

That sounds like an old hardware issue. I haven't upgraded to Win 10 on my desktop yet for several reasons. Mostly, I dislike Win 10, but it's become more tolerable since it was first introduced. The other issue is that my 2009 vintage Intel hardware isn't supported in Win 10. I'm going to have to get all new desktop hardware to upgrade to Win 10 which I will likely do in the next few months since Win 7 is at its end of life.

[itman 1,659]

1 minute ago, tjg79 said:

The other issue is that my 2009 vintage Intel hardware isn't supported in Win 10.

Win 10 x(64) 1909 - latest ver. - runs fine on my vintage 2008 AMD CPU and motherboard.

My daughter's old Dell I3 notebook also runs fine on Win 10 although upgrading to ver. 1909 was a bear. The problem there was repeated ver.  1903 Feature Upgrade failures via Windows Update locking up the device.

[tjg79 3]

I attempted a clean install of Win 10, but I couldn't find compatible Intel drivers for all the motherboard features. I'm using the Intel Rapid Storage Technology for a RAID configuration. The system was less than stable and a lot of the features were degraded in Win 10. The upgrade wasn't worth the trouble. Although some old hardware will run under Win 10, it doesn't run as well as it does when it's running the supported OS. Intel didn't support Win 10 for my Intel motherboard.

Edited January 7, 2020 by tjg79

[itman 1,659]

24 minutes ago, tjg79 said:

Although some old hardware will run under Win 10, it doesn't run as well as it does when it's running the supported OS.

In my case, my PC runs better on Win 10 than it ever did on Win 7. The key to performing Win 10 Feature Upgrades is never to do so via Win Updates. I do my upgrades via .iso download. Mount the .iso and run an in-place upgrade. All your files and settings are retained with no changes. This method has never failed for me and is as painless as it gets as far as Win 10 upgrades go.

Edited January 7, 2020 by itman

[peteyt 393]

1 hour ago, tjg79 said:

A new, minor update, Geforce driver was just installed. The old driver could have been the culprit.

 

I remember having a problem with a game, fallout 3 I believe. Couldn't play it but I'm sure I  could play other games. I know it wasn't designed originally for windows 10. Patches and stuff did nothing and updates for geforce didn't help.

I managed to fix by completely uninstalling my graphics card drivers and reinstalling and this seemed to work. Not sure what was causing it but if the update doesn't work try this or maybe even when installing choosing a fresh install although not sure if that option worked for me

[tjg79 3]

Three HP driver updates installed today; Synaptics Mouse, Synaptics HID Class, and HP software component.

These new driver updates could very likely resolve any mouse related bugs.

[ram1220 3]

 To OP. Just saw this.

https://www.engadget.com/2020/01/10/mozilla-firefox-critical-vulnerability-update/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9ndWNlLmVuZ2FkZ2V0LmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAALJYngiK4IxhPo-IkNc72itPKY2b-ZIMHElQMFX6EW2Rzcm4NEfaYWHbkv-LlxAIJTxH1-KjNgfkBw8jEzUyXdG9RibLRDeB4RiktitmC918qteD4Kj5FqnEyRxvH3_IKRbScwiI2F50qc6hcs96M_0lPwRYBJbeMF1o4lCVsGvt

[tjg79 3]

Thanks for that link.

I just checked my Firefox browser and I'm on version 72.0.1 (64-bit). It says "Firefox is up to date."

It must have updated automatically, because I posted earlier in this thread that my Firefox browser was version 72.0. It appears a minor update was installed.

My system has been relatively stable the past few days. I'll update if it starts acting up again.

Regards