Progs closing in XP - possibly virus related

[Treble]

Not happy about this: having to ask for a customer's problems on this site
Especially as we shouldn't be supporting them on general Windows problems ft:

Anyway, to get them off my back, I thought I'd ask here for speed. Whenever this comapny tries to open a program (and not all programs - most but not all. IE works, for example), it will open for a split second then instantly close. It's not minimising itself, before you ask.

I thought it might be Sasser, so got them to download the relevant fixes. When trying to install these apps, same problem happens - the progrmas just closed themselves. So I got them to run them in Safe mode, and they worked. However, I don't think it's Sasser, as it doesn't sound like its MO (plus the apps should have worked if it was).

I then got them to install Norton and run a full check, which came up with nada as well. There's a chance they haven't got the absolute latest definitions for Norton, but again I don't think the blame lies there.

So I don't really know what to think. They are on a two user network, connected by a wireless router, iirc, and the server has no problems, just the terminal. Any ideas?

[Adrock]

I've only had this problem when i've had some wierd ActiveX **** going on with my system, which is the fault of IE.

I cant help with much else apart from that. I know it isnt much but its something to maybe think about...

[SharkAttack]

My XP machine constantly closes programmes for no good reason. I soon noticed if I looked closely that the mouse cursor gets dragged up to the X and clicks to close. I either have a faulty mouse or faulty mouse drivers. Try that.

[MartyG]

You say it's happening for most applications. Are you sure it's not just office?

There are some known problems with that suite covered by Microsoft's Knowledge base:

here
and here
and here

Regards
Marty

[Treble]

Shark: thanks for the suggestion, but can't be that I don't think. We use a lot of DOS programs, and that can't be closed with a single click on the cross without then using END TASK ('Windows cannot end this program'...etc.)

Marty: again, thanks. It's definitely not just Office, though. Might be related to what you said, maybe, possibly, so i'll check it out.

My colleague is currently getting them to check what's running at startup using MSCONFIG, as things are fine when run in Safe mode. I'll let you know what happens. Thanks again for the suggestions.

[amorenod]

Maybe spyware?

Recently, I couldn't access Control Panel on a laptop with XP Home, it closed itself as soon as I clicked on it. A fast visual inspection revealed that it was infected with spyware (A virus scanning revealed loads of virus, but the problem continued after desinfection)

Scanning with Spybot, CWShredder and similar is worth a try.