Monitor programs accessing my keyboard?

Question

As of a few days ago, my computer is behaving 'erratically'. When I am typing, my pointer will randomly move to another place in the text and start typing a semi-random string of characters. ("gvyfn" is common; It has typed this about 8 times whilst I composed all the text above) It often highlights part of or all the text and overwrites it. It sometimes goes into loops of pressing Control-alt-delete down, bringing up Windows 7 menu thing.

It sometimes even messes with mouseclicks; they have unexpected results, like requesting admin priveledges from applications, instead of switching to their window. I believe this is because it is holding a alt-function key down.

This behaviour happens periodically, in waves. It might subside for an hour, then continue to haunt me. I believe it to be a virus or malicious program. My anti-virus (Symantec) and multiply MS rootkit removers could not find anything suspicious.

I've noticed that sometimes it re-maps keys, and types gibberish when I press certain keys (though no pattern is evident).

I believe a malicious program has installed a keyhook on my computer.

I'm wondering...
- Is there a way to let me view which programs are emulating keystrokes?
- Is there a way to view what keyboard hooks are installed?

(I'm also at liberty to try any other techniques to remove this blasted thing. It is easily the most fustrating computer problem I've encountered). Thanks!

Answer 1

My guess is to see if some little trickster put something such as a flash drive into your computer that would make it do such things. On the other hand, make sure your antivirus software is up to date (you do have some, correct?). If it is, run a full system scan and let the scan run until it is finished.

Answer 2

Assuming it's some sort of malware, first look at the processes tab in task manager. You might spot the offender there if you know what normally runs on your system.

If you can't find it there, do a full virus scan.

Also scan for other malware (my favorites are spybot S&D for spyware and Malwarebytes for other malware. Don't run them simultaneously, they will flag each other's malware definitions as malware).

If this doesn't show anything, try a boot scan if your antivirus program offers it, or do a rootkit scan (I have no idea what to recommend as a rootkit scanner, never needed it. But I'm assuming Kasperky's scanner is as good as their anti-virus) with Kaspersky

If none of this shows any malware, it could be a new virus for which there is no definition yet in the various scanners. In this case I would recommend a full reformat of your hdd.