I'm using Windows XP on my home pc set up with three user accounts as
follows:  my account, my partner’s account and an account labeled
'guest'.

Recently IE in my account became unusable.  When I bring the browser
up, I get a string of nonsense text.  It's not gibberish but
nonsensical.  Almost like text designed to avoid a spam filter.  The
text appears in the browser's entry window as if someone was at the
keyboard.  It’s actually kind of spooky.

I’ve tried a google search under "weird browser behavior" and found an
almost identical description of my problem as follows:

http://lists.insecure.org/lists/firewall-wizards/2002/Aug/0018.html
"Home XP computer on DSL running norton system works...IE is VERY
slow...you put your cursor in the address bar and type...and it's 20
seconds or so before the letters appear. You go to any site, and it
takes quite a while for the page to come up. So I installed NS 6.2
thinking it's just a browser corruption. When I bring up NS, and don't
do anything, words start appearing in the address bar... something
like this.
......start appearing then the word *to* then the word *you* then some
more
.....'s 
And if you put your cursor in the address bar to type a url, the
message overrides what you're typing.
Any ideas folks? This ones got me stumped... "

This unfortunate soul never got an answer.  Curiously, the other two
accounts on the system do not have this problem.  IE works fine on
these accounts.  I've downloaded, installed and run AdAware hoping
this is due to some stealth program to no affect on this problem.

I'm tempted to delete the account and start a new one but I'd really
like to know how to address this properly..

Help is  greatly appreciated.

---

Request for Question Clarification by slawek-ga on 06 May 2003 11:16 PDT

Hi chard231-ga,

It sounds to me like your problem is a result of having visited a web
site that either unsuccessfully tried to make itself your home page,
or something similar.

I would recommend going to your "Internet Options" in "Settings" ->
"Control Panel" (the Settings option is located inside the start
menu).  Clear all your cache memories, delete all cookies, and
history.

Erasing cookies will result in your browser forgetting some settings
for web sites you might have visited, and entered preferences on
(including remembered passwords).

Please let me know if you need any step by step instructions in
completing the above listed ideas, and I will be glad to deliver the
information.

Also, if this helped, let me know and I will post this as an official
answer.


Thank you.

Researcher slawek-ga.
Google Answers

---

Clarification of Question by chard231-ga on 06 May 2003 12:15 PDT

We’ll I actually attempted to do this before I posted but ran into
some unexpected problems.  Although I’ve used the clear history and
temporary Internet files command previously, I like to manually locate
the temporary directories and delete their contents.  I can be certain
I’ve gotten everything this way.  I do this regularly on my office
workstation running NT.

It was difficult to do this using explorer under XP.  The cookie
directories won’t appear in the explorer window.  I had to bring up a
picture viewer program, open a .jpg, scroll to find a picture of a
portion of a web page I previously visited (a type of cookie I guess),
identify its properties and then type the file location into explorer
manually.  Once in the folder, I am able to attempt to select all and
delete.  – I’m sure there’s an explorer command to allow it to show
hidden system files…  This would be helpful if you know it.

I say attempt to delete in that the size of these folders appears to
be so great that the delete function took minutes… and that’s only for
one directory.  I thought about using a command prompt.  Can you
imagine what I’ll go through just to get to the directory I want using
a command prompt?

Perhaps these folders were created and preserved in error during an
intense browsing session.  They don’t seem to be emptied by the clear
history command… and they seem full of pictures I’d rather not have on
my machine.  I haven’t really looked to see if these directories were
cleared since I last sat down to do this.  I am still having the
problem however.

I’ll try your suggestion but I’m doubtful.

---

Clarification of Question by chard231-ga on 13 May 2003 07:57 PDT

slawek-ga:

Your suggestion cleared up my problem.... thanks for the help.  I'm
ready to finish this question.

Hi chard231-ga,

Glad to hear that I was able to help, and all is working well now.
For the record, following is the official answer.  Thank you for using
Google Answers.  Although the answer I gave you has not been found on
the Internet and comes from my experience with computers, I have added
a section about trying to find answers to similar problems.


OFFICIAL ANSWER:

It sounds to me like your problem is a result of having visited a web
site that either unsuccessfully tried to make itself your home page,
or something similar.
 
I would recommend going to your "Internet Options" in "Settings" ->
"Control Panel" (the Settings option is located inside the start
menu).  Clear all your cache memories, delete all cookies, and
history.
 
Erasing cookies will result in your browser forgetting some settings
for web sites you might have visited, and entered preferences on
(including remembered passwords).
 
Please let me know if you need any step by step instructions in
completing the above listed ideas, and I will be glad to deliver the
information.


SEARCH STRATEGY / TROUBLESHOOTING IDEAS:

A good search strategy is to use multiple phrases in a Google Search. 
For example, you could do a search for
"abnormal"OR"weird"+"browser"+"behaviour"+"explorer"+"Internet"+"xp"


CLARIFICATION

The files belonging to web sites, residing on your hard drive are part
of the cache memory.  They are used to improve loading speed for web
sites. Rather than downloading each part of the web site each time,
the browser saves the files on the hard drive.  Next time you request
the page, a comparison is made between the stored files, and the
online files.  If the files are the same, the browser will load as
much as possible from the cache memory, rather than downloading it
again.

As you might have noticed in Internet Settings, you can adjust the
amount of hard drive space reserved for such purposes.  A friend of
mine who uses Window XP and Internet Explorer has experienced problems
with the cache not clearing, resulting in gigabytes of wasted hard
drive space.  I am not sure if it is a problem with Internet Explorer,
or Windows XP.  Unfortunately because I don't use IE, and seldom use
Windows XP in my everyday work, I am unable to observe and track the
problem.  I would recommend doing as you did so far, and keeping an
eye on your files, deleting some of them manually when things get out
of hand.


Regards, 
Researcher slawek-ga. 
Google Answers

Thanks for the additional tips... my next pc will be a mac I swear!

Thank you for the tip.

Yes, Window$ is frustrating, but some very nice alternatives are
emerging, from web browsers (Opera is really nice, supports Win,
Linux, and others), to Operating Systems (Linux is getting very close
to being usable by the average user, not just rocket scientists),
OpenOffice is a real great alternative for M$ Office (it is free, and
supports most document types created by M$ Office like Excel and Word,
available for Win, Linux, and others), and much more.

Don't lose heart, and please be sure to visit Google Answers when ever
you are stomped by a problem!

I found this after encountering the problem again ... then checking my
task manager.  sure enough, sapisvr was running...  others may
encounter / appreciate.

Dear Jack, 

Please help me! I think that somebody is hacking my computer! Whenever
I open Word or Internet Explorer, my computer starts typing for me. I
downloaded Norton Antivirus and it says that I am fine. Who or what is
doing this hacking?!?

— Jason 


Dear Jason, 

The cause of your mysterious unknown problem resides in a program
called “sapisvr.exe.” Basically, “sapisvr.exe” is a speech recognition
program created by Microsoft and is installed by some manufacturers.
After you install Microsoft Office XP or other speech-enabled products
by using Microsoft's Speech application programming interface (API),
random words or characters may be displayed in Office XP documents or
in the Internet Explorer Address bar. This behavior can occur because
the speech recognition tool is “listening” to your voice through your
computer's microphone and is attempting to recognize what you are
saying. In order to remedy this situation, you can turn off the speech
recognition software.