Mysterious Virus Playing Music on My PC!

About 30 minutes after I turned on my PC yesterday and again today some rock
music started playing quietly out of my speakers. I isn't any of my own
music and there was no way of stopping it so had to let it play out. It only
seems to do it once but who knows what else may be going on?

How do I delete it and make sure it doesn't do it again? Is this some sort
of weird virus?

I shall run some virus and spyware programmes again but maybe someone out
there know something about it.

It may be someone is pulling a prank on you.
Check and make sure no disk is in a drive.
Check Start button > Programs > Startup folder to see if there's anything in it that
shouldn't be.
Click Start > Run, type in: msconfig and press Enter or click Ok.
Click the Startup tab and see if there's anything in there that shouldn't be.

If you aren't sure of what would or shouldn't be in msconfig startup, post the
contents in a response to this thread for us to see.

Pretty funny, whatever it is. I would suspect some form of 'harmonic' There
are filters(capacitors) you can put on the speaker cable to prevent this. I
would imagine you could just 'shield it out' with some grounded wire wrapped
around the speaker cable.
To determine if my guess is right, simply mute the speaker from the
notification icon, and if it does not stop, that's it.

Now it had had been a radio or your HiFi, you would have gone for the volume
control and turned it down - if that did not work you would have had more
information for people sush as I who spent working life on electronic repairs.
There is a volume control on your computer - try it

the music stops when I mute the speakers. I wondered if the music
was coming from elsewhere as it is far quieter than everything else, but it
would seem that it is indeed coming from somewhere on my PC!
The point is that my PC is automatically playing a music file which I do
not own and I cannot stop from playing or find out where it is stored.
Simply muting the speakers does not stop the problem.
I'm the only person who uses my PC and I'm pretty sure I didn't
pull a prank on myself! I checked the drives anyway and there isn't anything
in my start-up folder. I ran Norton and Ad-Aware - neither found anything.

I'm still waiting to see if the music starts up again today as My PC has
almost been on 30 mins now!

The thing responsible for playing music (and other audio now) is
iexplore.exe. It seems to be connecting on its own and running in the
background. How do I find and delete the culprit?,

I think that Process Explorer (which you can download from Microsoft) is
the answer to part of your problem. You can use it in two ways:

1. You can prove that it is iexplore.exe that is playing the music by
locating it in the "Process" list, and suspending it. Once you hit the
right process, suspending it will stop the music. This only proves what
is playing it, but it is conclusive.

2. Once you've found the process (1. Above) you can then use the
process tree to find what started iexplore.exe (hopefully). This might
find the culprit.

To use this utility, perform the following...
Execute; Multi_AV.exe { Note: You must use the default folder C:\AV-CLS }
Choose; Unzip
Choose; Close

Execute; C:\AV-CLS\StartMenu.BAT
{ or Double-click on 'Start Menu' in C:\AV-CLS }

NOTE: You may have to disable your software FireWall or allow WGET.EXE to go through your
FireWall to allow it to download the needed AV vendor related files.

C:\AV-CLS\StartMenu.BAT -- { or Double-click on 'Start Menu' in C:\AV-CLS}
This will bring up the initial menu of choices and should be executed in Normal Mode.
This way all the components can be downloaded from each AV vendor's web site.
The choices are; Sophos, Trend, McAfee, Kaspersky, Exit this menu and Reboot the PC.

You can choose to go to each menu item and just download the needed files or you can
download the files and perform a scan in Normal Mode. Once you have downloaded the files
needed for each scanner you want to use, you should reboot the PC into Safe Mode [F8 key
during boot] and re-run the menu again and choose which scanner you want to run in Safe
Mode. It is suggested to run the scanners in both Safe Mode and Normal Mode.

When the menu is displayed hitting 'H' or 'h' will bring up a more comprehensive PDF help
file.

[CouldBeAnyone]

I'm having the problem described here, too. Did this thread ever find a resolution?

I ran Process Explorer, and the iexplore.exe that's playing the music is being run by explorer.exe.

It starts every 5-10 minutes or so. What could cause this?

Not necessarily. The OP might have resolved her/his problem using some of the advice presented here and never replied with that information. The discussion might have continued in some other form.

Also, the last post on this thread was only a couple months ago.

I had the same thing. After searching or information i've to find that somehow a file opens but cant see it.The music turns on every ten minutes and can't see what program plays it. I finally found it on task manager nd its a .tmp file that starts with numbers example(755532.tmp). So i end process but it later somehow comes back on. Problem started after my computer starting getting bluescreen and correcting problem by uninstalling IE8. Using Google chrome now. Trieing to reinstall IE8... no success.

i had the same issue but found the files in the folder below. C:\Users\(your user name)\AppData\Local\Temp\

The files seem to be about 5 or 6 exe files named a to F. I use vista so the path may be different for others.

its possible the creator of the virus might have put something more dangerous along with this easy found virus.

Anyway delete those files and empty bin. no more music. thank you.

same thing happened to me today... i was using this program videora to convert videos for ur ipod.. then out of nowhere bunch of different sounds started to come out of my speakers... so i turned off my modem then i turned it on again.. and music started to play again.. so i just turn off my pc..

[Bast]

I have the same problem, but it's not playing any music or so. I end task it every 5-10 minutes but it continue to apear. Antivirus dont detect it ... early i install Tune Up, and then Iexplore 8.0 then the things start.
I will post some info from my computer this i can spair to see what's going on. I realy cannot remove it. Dont know how or just will reinstall windows :)
If someone can make it widout reinstall please to tell US.
And this now ... i just manage to see that always have some .tmp file in task's found it and archive if someone can see what is in it.
Dont have any strange programs in startup, and dont have nothing in mscofig too.

I have the same problem. Music or advertisements will start playing from my speakers. I have located it in the task manager as the iexplorer.exe task. The only way to get it to stop is to terminate the process (sometimes it is the wrong process and I end up closing IE). I have researched online and many other individuals are having the same problem. I have read multiple solutions (some good & some not so good). Currently, I am removing IE and using Firefox until a permanent solution is provided....Yes it is frustrating, but it works for the mean time.

I am having the same problem with music or what seems to be youtube video playing through my speakers. If people are having the same problem as I am having I do not believe it is what you are describing above.

I currently do not use IE, so when my first encounter of music/sounds came from my speakers I closed my Google Chrome bowser. After closing ALL applications running from my desktop the sounds did not go away.

If you go to task manager however you can see iexplorer.exe running in the background and when you close the task the music/sounds stop. In my case the application starts back up every 10-15 min and the music/sounds continue until I go back to task manager to close the application.

So I couldn't tell you what web sites the music/sounds are coming from and even if I could figure it out it wouldn't solve the problem of iexplorer.exe opening up secretly and running in the background undetected.

Some WWW sites you go to play music as soon as their page finishes
loading. The playing of music is built into their page by design.

It is not a virus, nor is it mysterious, and there is nothing wrong.
However it is annoying if you don't like it or are not expecting it.
It can also be embarrassing if someone else hears the music as you
scramble to make it stop.

Sometimes a WWW page will place a mute icon in the page or have an
option to click for no music - kind of like the Skip Intro option you
see sometimes.

Some browsers may let you enable or disable this feature. I don't
know why Firefox doesn't do it and IE does for you but there must be a
logical explanation.

I am guessing that it is only some WWW pages that have this "problem"?

Why don't y'all give some specific examples of these web pages that
are playing the music and someone else can check them out? I don't
see any examples, so please provide a few.

Here is a NSFW (not suitable for work) example for a club advertised
in the local news WWW page

Then you will know if there is something about your computer or if it
is something about that WWW page.

Can you figure out how to post a URL that demonstrates your problem?

Do some sites work okay or is it all sites?

A similar problem was posted a while back and fixed by a malware scan.

When you ran the suggested multiple times malware removal programs
what happened, or have you chosen not run them?

Download, install, update and do a full scan with these three free
malware detection programs:

Here is another interesting article.

http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=k...1186&x=11&y=11

But I think that one is beeps playing over the PC speaker (but still
amusing).

Download, install, run, update and perform a full scan (separately) with the
following two applications (freeware versions are the ones to use for this):

SuperAntiSpyware
MalwareBytes

After performing a full scan with one and then the other and removing
whatever they both find completely, you may uninstall these products,
if you wish.

I know this getting to be a real PITA.

I am seeing replies to subject matter 2 ~ 3 years old and they *never* quote what they
reply to!

A leech site pretending to have forums by running a webnews-for-dummies
interface that submits improperly formatted posts through a gateway to
Usenet (aka newsgroups).

So, you transfered the malware that's causing the problem to another
computer?

[frogger]

I don't know what the fix is but if you let it continue...at least in my case it corrupts portions of your hard drive. I can no longer login at all. Windows attempts to load but stops and you never get to the user logon screen at all just a blank blue or black screen. I haven't been able to obtain a cd of windows xp home edition without just buying a new disk if anyone knows where I can download XP to repair my system please help or if you know of another option to regain control.

[jh55f]

Did anyone ever figure anything out about this? I have a somewhat similar weird thing - but worse! It's not rock music, but rather some little melody, like a kids tune! Eeeek! It only plays for a couple of seconds, then quits so if I check running processes, its gone.

Also, for background, I borrowed a barely used laptop from a friend and loaded a bunch of stuff from my desktop. My desktop never played the horrible tune, but this laptop did. Now, I just got a new laptop and transferred everything from the borrowed laptop onto it, and guess what. That damned tune has apparently come along for the party, so now the new laptop also randomly plays that tune for a couple of seconds.

Can't wait til I'm out in public and my laptop burps that stupid tune!

That doesn't make sense to me. Why wouldn't it also play on my desktop computer (where all the files came from originally)?

[emnetik]

If you still have problems with music playing out of iexplore.exe i can provide you temporary solution. It doesnt fix the thing but music wont play any more and you wouldnt be able to use internet explorer. I had this problem with music virus and because im using chrome i wanted to uninstall internet explorer but i couldnt because of vista. I found temporary solution by not allowing iexplore.exe to run at all. Ill try to find complete solution later as i dont have time now.
Reply and ill tell U how to do it...

[zebra-man]

holly crap this virus is anoying! ive had it for about a week now and its driving me nuts. i deleted firefox for some reason and then decided to update it but everytime it downloaded it said the file was corrupt, so i started surfing using IE but this music was still there, i swtiched to chrome but the musi still keeps on coming at me. none of the virus scans are getting it, so im not too sure what to do. anybody tried using some spyware stuff or something? ive read from other people that they just wiped their HD and installed everything again...

[Happy_To_Help]

Originally Posted by zebra-man

? ive read from other people that they just wiped their HD and installed everything again...

Yes, if any of the antivirus program is unable to detect it than there is no other option rather than formatting the hard drive. BTW, what kind of music you are getting ? I meant, is it like any beep sound or music from your MP3 collection or else. This might some another problem as well.

[Alenz]

Hi there!:

I have the same trouble here BUT I am on a windows server 2008. I have one more clue on this thing. For months my windows DEP(data execution prevention) system has obliterated some programs to work on my pc. Their names are OPEX, APEX and another one I don´t seem to remember.

This is what I think but correct me if I´m wrong. Opex(which is a virus by the way, only that I haven´t read anywhere that it plays music) loads the music before playing it from internet(which keeps working thru IEexplores, which also can´t be uninstalled). So shuting it down is like putting a stop to its play button but no to the cause. Also, putting down Opex sometimes doesn´t work because it has already download all the music and IEexplores just keeps playing it in loop.

Antiviruses doesn´t seem to work and we are all alone here because aside this forum no one seems to have the same trouble(that I have found that is of course).

And I am not giving up my sistem because of it. So, people of the world, help me here.

How do I find an invisible program and how I destroy it without an antivirus? It´s name is Opex and it gives me the chills when it starts to laugh at me.

Thank in advance.

Alenz

Pd: If you just wants to bypass this problem, turn down OPEX just as you start using your PC. That keeps the beast calm...but we still don´t know what´s happening inside there. It looks to me like the work of a lonely hacker.