Could Your Computer Be Infected with Malware? A Cautious Examination

When it comes to the security of our devices, vigilance is essential. Recently, I experienced some peculiar behavior on my laptop that has left me feeling anxious about the possibility of malware infection. Here’s a detailed account of the symptoms I’ve noticed and the steps I plan to take moving forward.

Disturbing Signs of Potential Malware

For the past couple of months, I’ve observed something unsettling—my command prompt occasionally flashes on my screen. This happens intermittently, sometimes at startup, and other times seemingly out of the blue while I’m fully engaged in activities like gaming. Although this alone was concerning, I didn’t delve deeply into the issue until a more alarming incident occurred last night.

While I was using my laptop to stream music on Spotify, the screen went dark because I hadn’t interacted with it in a while. When I returned to use the mouse to pause my playlist, I noticed that the Spotify application had inexplicably closed itself. To add to my distress, once I returned to my home screen, the context menu repeatedly popped up without me clicking anything. This erratic mouse behavior persisted for several minutes—my movements felt sluggish, and I became increasingly perplexed when selecting tabs, as the wrong items were highlighted without any input from me. Thankfully, this odd behavior subsided, but it raised many red flags.

Previously, I had encountered similar mouse issues, prompting me to perform a complete system reset. Given that this was meant to rectify such problems, I was taken aback by these recent events.

Initial Troubleshooting Steps

To put my mind at ease, I ran a full scan using Windows Defender, which reported no issues. However, during a quick scan, I noticed something alarming: it indicated that a quick scan had been performed earlier in the day at around 2:00 PM—exactly when I hadn’t initiated one. Additionally, there was a system update logged at the same time, which I have been intentionally avoiding. While these may seem like minor inconsistencies, I find them worth mentioning as they contribute to my growing concern.

Throughout the day leading up to these incidents, I had my laptop running for several hours. I started it around 1:00 PM to play a game for about an hour and a half, left it in sleep mode for a few hours, and then resumed using it for Spotify without noticing any unusual behavior until that night.