Hard'format city

I'm tapping this out on my Droid, because my laptop is hurting bad.

Late last night, my Firefox browser starts bouncing to my home page, regardless of where I'm browsing. Then it starts popping up new browser windows at a fast-enough rate that I can't really do much else.

Flash forward to today, where I'm on the phone with HP. After she tries 3-4 things, she tells me that we could get this fixed with a Level 3 technician -- but we don't qualify for that with our extended warranty that they told me would cover everything.

I told we weren't paying for that, so she says we could do a hard format. I've only had this laptop since December, so I knew I would not lose too much. So I did a hard format ... and the problem STILL persists. Fifty browser windows in two minutes.

I'm now running a hard'drive and memory scan to see if they're going to send me a recovery disk, or a recovery disk AND a new hard drive if the drive is corrupted. (And get this: THAT is covered by my warranty.)

This is really shooting the hell out of my NCAA day.

 

Is it just happening with Firefox? My wife is a tech, so she might be able to help.

 

Computer companies are there with banks and Wal Mart on things I could rant all day and all night about. Level 3 tech costs more? Fucking vampires.

Does the popping up thing happen with other programs, or just Firefox? I'm pretty stunned total reinstall of everything didn't work. I'd have been stunned a simple reinstall of Firefox didn't work. Obviously it has to be a hardware issue, at least according to what I know about computers. Dumb question, but have you Googled looking for an answer? A quick glance makes it look like perhaps there's a Firefox add on malfunction, and uninstalling or disabling those one by one, you can pinpoint what the problem is. I assume you're way, way beyond that suggestion though.

That's my level 1 tech advice, anyway. Send me a check and I'll give you my level 3 advice.

 

First thing we checked, spike. It's IE too. Very strange.

 

Wife says download from malwarebytes.com and see if anything pops up.

 

I've had that happen with IE before. You got some kind of virus. You'll need to locate the virus or spyware causing this, delete it, and upgrade your protection so it doesn't infiltrate again.

 

I'm running Norton 360.

Here's the maddening part. I can't even get to a website to run an online scan, because these new windows pop up so fast, I can't execute a command. I couldn't even do a program uninstall.

 

Wife says: Can you download from another computer and use a USB key to get the program on there?

 

It's a thought ...

 

Get something else.

Run in safe mode when you use malwarebytes too.

 

Call No. 4 seems to have identified the problem:

Keyboard. Something is pinching in there, causing browser windows to recycle and create. No virus, no corrupted drive.

We'll get the UPS box Monday, should get notebook back in a week from there.

 

Good to know the problem is solved!