I have NIS 2010 version 17.5.0.127 and I had something very strange happening on my 64 bit Vista SP 2 system, a few hours ago, which most likely isn't over despite the symptoms being gone. I was watching some "future of" videos on a tech web site, in the 32 bit version of IE 8, when Windows Help showed up and started flashing down in my task bar but I did not open Help; it did this automatically. I clicked down in my task bar to close Help out and when I did that more Help windows opened. I can't remember exactly what I did prior to this but at some point, 21 tabs also tried to open in IE 8. I finally got Task Manager to open and as I was closing out applications and Help more windows and tabs opened faster than I could close them. Every time I tried to open an application, the Help for it opened. I was unable to use applications or shut Windows down normally; I turned my system off with the power button. After I calmed down a bit so that I could think about what I should do next, I booted into Safe Mode, without networking, and ran full scans with NIS 2010, MBAM, and SAS but they found nothing. However, MBAM and SAS weren't current with today's definitions; it had been a few days since I had updated them, since you can't update them through a standard/limited user account. I don't frequently boot into my admin account. When I got the system booted into Safe Mode, Windows Help opened for help using Safe Mode, automatically. Hoping to prevent more windows from opening, I left the Windows Help about Safe Mode open and alone. Trying to close Help seemed to cause more windows to open in regular mode. No more Help windows opened, in Safe Mode, despite running NIS, MBAM, and SAS.
After running the scans, I was able to burn my personal files to a CD from Safe Mode. Unfortunately, I couldn't back up my Windows Mail through copy and paste and I'm afraid of what I might bring with it, if I run Windows Backup. I will most likely end up restoring the system to "out of box"; I've been planning to do that for another reason (not malware related) anyway but just haven't gotten around to it yet. Now, it looks like restoring is more urgent but it would be nice if I could clean the system and backup my e-mail in Windows Mail, first.
I was just going to restore it to "out of box" immediately but out of curiosity, I decided to try booting into regular mode of Windows again, to see what would happen, and for some strange reason the system appears to be running normally. I didn't get any Windows Help windows when it booted back into regular mode and logged into my regular standard user account. Also, applications have been opening and running normally, without Help popping up. Of course, something could be hiding and I don't trust it. Also, whatever this is could happen to someone else so exploring it a bit more might be helpful. Apparently, whatever it is/was got past an up to date NIS 2010. When this happened, I got no notifications from NIS and there is nothing in my NIS History to indicate a problem.
Since the system seems to be stable and running in regular mode, I downloaded and ran HijackThis. I have included the log. I would appreciate it if someone would look at my HijackThis log and see if anything abnormal is showing up there.
Thanks