My friend has a laptop running Windows XP.
It recently began exhibiting a strange behavior: out of the blue, the Windows search utility will open and flash really fast, scrolling through various settings.
There’s no apparent precipitating behavior causing it – it seems to happen randomly. You can end the utility with the task manager, but another one always starts immediately. The only remedy is to reboot the machine.
As I said, I thought it might be a virus, but it still happens after I loaded anti-virus and anti-spyware software.
This laptop has been used as a stand-alone machine, so it hasn’t been online in a while. I’m thinking it needs a Windows update, and will try that tonight.
I’d appreciate any other thoughts on what it might be.
(I checked the sticky that contained a FAQ on computer questions, and didn’t see anything that I thought addressed this sufficiently. Apologies if I missed anything).