Blinking OS! Every keystroke or mouseclick causes chaos

Very weird activity on spouse's computer. Started on Facebook with multiple windows opening and the dialog boxes getting looonnnng. I had him log off and change his password. When he tried to change it the screen dimmed with each click until it went black. I hit the off button and shut it down. Restarted and chaos ensued. Taskbar shows stacks of tiled windows with every click--multiple firefox windows, multiples of everything including the task manager when opened kept opening window after window. Am running Security Essentials full scan on it right now and had to restart three times to get it to scan using keyboard commands--mouse is almost useless. The start key results in rapidly blinking window, then desktop blinks and a host of programs start trying to open. This is a crazy bad infection of some kind. Please help!

Update: I managed to get the Piriform Cleaner to run after closing over fifty windows behind the one started analyzing. When I cleaned the registry the multiple windows and blinking has stopped for now. A list of Active X showed up on the registry that may have been the cause. Has anyone else experienced such chaos? Trying to open windows the blinking and multiple windows opening resumed. This is a mess.

Yes, read this .... Browser Hijacking: What It Is and How to Avoid It


Are you able to do a system restore to a date before this happened?

Scan finished without finding anything. Says system is protected. No blinking. No multiple windows opening. Start key is normal again. I will mark this as solved after spouse reports no problems later today. Thanks for your help. I think the registry cleaner got it if it was indeed a possible hijack. Home page is unaffected and bookmarks are fine so hopeful. I went through the OS files and looked at all the files modified yesterday and today and most of them look related to MS Security Essentials update. No weird new apps in there.

Let's see if AdwCleaner picks up on anything...


Please download AdwCleaner by Xplode and save to your Desktop.



Step 1.

• Double click on AdwCleaner.exe to run the tool.
  Vista/Windows 7/8 users right-click and select Run As Administrator.
• Click on the Scan button.
• AdwCleaner will begin...be patient as the scan may take some time to complete.
• After the scan has finished, click on the Report button...a logfile (AdwCleaner[R#].txt) will open in Notepad for review (where the largest value of # represents the most recent report).
• The contents of the log file may be confusing. Unless you see a program name that you know should not be removed, don't worry about it. If you see an entry you want to keep, let me know about it.
• Copy and paste the contents of that logfile in your next reply.
• A copy of all logfiles are saved in the C:\AdwCleaner folder which was created when running the tool.

Step 2.
Using AdwCleaner v3: Scan & Clean:
This time click on the Clean button.
Press OK when asked to close all programs and follow the onscreen prompts.
Press OK again to allow AdwCleaner to restart the computer and complete the removal process.
After rebooting, a logfile report (AdwCleaner[S#].txt) will open automatically (where the largest value of # represents the most recent report).
Copy and paste the contents of that logfile in your next reply.
A copy of that logfile will also be saved in the C:\AdwCleaner folder


******Post both .txt logs