My sister was on her computer typing in MS Word and all of a sudden it started typing on its own. This is what it said:
It outlines the old and renowned Weren’t infused ends at any is a bit errors will wear and is a thing as a>and lots of growing worries me and zoned for you running Norton E. Speaking in digital buttons and it try and the opera in a war zone and name and in in in it easier on an age where are your words in an E. A. E. P. R. C. dot fat and lazy to ask hesitant at it says is that I mean media that net and in our will and a package in 1988 and a
It typed (…) really long and then 1 sec after it typed the periods all of them turned to words…
It said more before but we deleted it and it kept going it only stopped when we went to copy and paste it into an email.
The wireless internet was on but not on any webpage.
The computer didn’t have any virus’s or trojans at that time. We have an active virus software running at all times and when this was going on there were no pop ups saying security problems… not then or anytime in the near future.
We thought this was very weird and sort of scary It never happened before or ever again
Also, I’ve hijacked computers, my family’s computers and there is a way to tell if someone has access to your computer. depending on which program you’re using you can see the cursor flickering.
This time the mouse didn’t move on its own… at all… The cursor didnt move at all!!!.. not even to click on a spot on MS word to type… it just started randomly anywhere on the page… not even where we left off typing… but the cursor didn’t move once on its own. it stayed where we left it…
We have firewalls set up on the router and computer and have an anti virus program running!
No speech to txt programs on the computer and no handicap…
My boyfriend is an engineer and he couldn’t figure it out. and im not too computer illiterate myself and i’ve never seen this happen. I’ve seen peoples computer hijacked but never seen this kind of typing in MS word…
my mom is superstitious and was thinking ghost. we’ve had voices and moving objects and scratching and seeing people in my last house (somewhat haunted) but this is a new apartment and we haven’t had any paranormal things happen… what could this be… it was a bit scary. we googled the names and such and the name came up with an author and a date similar or exact to the one in the gibberish that was typed…
Help!
And NO IT DID NOT TELL ME TO FOLLOW THE WHITE RABBIT, JUST TO GET THAT OUT OF THE WAY!
Is your computer made of ancient indian burial grounds? Is there split pea soup leaking from any of the USB ports? Has anyone become trapped inside the screen? It is imperative you answer these questions as quickly as possible. In the meantime, spray some of that keyboard dust remover stuff at the computer while chanting, “The power of unix compels you.”
Quick tip: suggesting that you have ghosts and going so far as to pose that as a legitimate possible cause of your problem could get your thread hijacked by those of us with our mouths gaping open in awe that anyone could possibly think that. You’ve never lived in a house that had ghosts because nobody in the history of mankind ever has. Just wanted to get that out of the way…
Besides, if ghosts were real, it would make sense that the computer literate ones would be in a newer apartment. People that died fifty or sixty years ago generally weren’t all that familiar with MS Word.
At any rate, you’ve got something running on that computer that shouldn’t be. What virus scanner are you using? Some (especially Norton) are absolutely abysmal at finding what you’re paying them to find. Give the free version of AVG a shot. And download HijackThis, which will show you everything that is running on your PC. Post the log results so we can weed out the legit programs and find the one(s) that shouldn’t be there.
The OP would probably remember saying that schizophrenic-sounding text she quoted if it was a speech recognition thing.
A wireless keyboard could be a very remote possiblity. Got any crazy neighbors, beyondimagination07? If you can’t tell, a good tip off is that they are physically incapable of going five minutes without using the phrase “Zionist conspiracy.”
I’m still banking on the text-to-speech, especially if it’s only happening in MSWord, etc. If the microphone level isn’t set up properly (the usual state of affairs; hardly anyone uses theirs), it’ll be reading low-level static, which ends up as random words.
Huh. Hadn’t considered low levels misinterpreting speech into gibberish. I could see that, but I wonder why it would have only happened on that one occasion. Wouldn’t the software be entering random crap into forms and the address bar in IE as well? Also, the OP would state that there is no such software running on her computer. Somebody had to turn it on.
Then again, the fact that it stopped when she copied and pasted the text, removing focus from Word, seems a little too symtomatic of MS’s speech recognition to ignore.
Given some recent threads, is anyone thinking we may need a “need help fast” forum? I mean, a broken computer is one thing, but a rouge installation of Capn’ Handy is another…
Has an old, gnarled hand reached out from the center of the monitor, and throttled your neck within an inch of your life? Think very hard before anwering this.
We had not music running and we weren’t saying anything. She was doing her homework and this happened out of nowhere. her mic was muted… She never uses it so she keeps it on mute on the volume controls.
Speech rec programs don’t type periods and then change them to words. This sounds like a Word macro virus. It is possible it slipped by a virus detector. Did anyone send you a Word file recently?
Open Word, go to Tools, Options, and find out what directory your templates are in. Close Word. Use Windows Explorer to go to that directory, and find Normal.dot. Change the name of that file to Normal.Suspect.dot or something. Then restart Word. If you see that problem again in the future, then perhaps it is something more sophisticated. I am very knowledgable about VBA macros in Word but not so much about using it to build viruses.
neutron star: If it’s the Office XP t-2-s (the one in my link), then it would probably be installed by default, and (apparently) would only affect Office components. Email would only be affected if they use Outlook with the MSWord editor option. According to the KB article, you can’t remove t-2-s, even if you uninstall Office, so I’m not sure microphone status would have anything to do with it.
If Alternate Input isn’t selected, and the keyboard and other input devices aren’t wireless, then I can’t think why that would be happening.
In any case, Microsoft Office Speech Recognition (at least 2003) displays speech that has been entered as a series of periods; as they are converted to text, words display. A slower machine might make these appear gradually as the algorithms are run.
I think your diagnosis is correct. While Word is vulnerable to macros, this behaviour sounds like speech recognition to me.
Is there a webcam mic you have not considered btw?
As the OP knows, I hope, speech recognition, text to speech and voice navigation are all part of MS Word 2003 already (at least, they came with mine…).
One more thing…it’s easy to test this.
Open up MS Word, go to Tools, and select “Speech” on the drop-down. This should bring up the Language Bar. Make sure Microphone is selected, click on Dictation and start babbling. You should see a long line of periods followed by text as the speech is recognized. If you haven’t been through the training for it, the speech may be pretty garbled.
i dont know how to unplug it. It’s an internal microphone on a laptop. It was on mute in the volume controls. it’s never been used though. and i looked through the tools and tool bar options and couldn’t find anything for speech
