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A weird situation

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by dartfrogs404

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One of my customers claims that as she types in Word XP, her computer seems to be "typing along with her". It places words and symbols on the screen that she has typed in the past. In addition, she left Word open overnight, and in the morning she found a page filled with words from the past, and even a page with this sitting in her printer. Using Norton Antivirus, I told her to update her pattern files, but in the mean time I was curious if anyone had any ideas OTHER THAN A VIRUS for why this is happening. She WAS NOT connected to the internet when this was happening.

5 replies

by ann777

In Word XP, you have the option of AutoCorrect (Tools --> AutoCorrect Options).. if she has this option turned on, then if she starts to type "atte" she will likely get a pop-up comment (like a yellow information comic balloon) that will tell her to press enter for the word "attention:". If she has filled in this listing of words with other common words she tends to use, then this window can pop-up quite often.

There are also "word prediction software" out there, but she should know if she has installed any of these:
http://trace.wisc.edu/docs/wordprediction2001/

And there's some specifically for XP:
http://www.spectronicsinoz.com/product.asp?product=134

As far as automatically pulling up a file and printing it -- Is she living alone? Is there anyone else who'd be using the computer and maybe playing a game with her?

And my final question -- Is it possible she's pulling your leg? Or that you are pulling ours?

by dartfrogs404

Unfortunately no-one else lives with her, she's a 70 year old widowed lady, so I sincerely doubt she's pulling my leg. Also, i'm not pulling yours. I wouldn't waste my time.

by nikki96

Might she have speech recognition software running? It could be even if she thinks it isn't, so have someone check all her running processes.

If so, she needs to turn it off or turn off the microphone on the PC.

I have heard of this before. A search on google groups pulled up several matches.

Here's a very long link to the threads. Watch for spaces when you copy/paste and remove any.

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&q=microsoft+word+xp+types+by+itself&sa=N&tab=wg

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