The command prompt randomly pops up blank and closes all web browsers, it can visually be seen when im playing a game in fullscreen mode. It happens once every few seconds or once every few minutes. The command promt goes away so fast that I have no way of actually seeing anything on it, it just looks like a blank black box but sometimes there is a bit of white on it. I have tried to look at googles crash logs when the prompt crashes it but it appears that there are no crashes at all. I have done a lot of virus checks with norton and with google chrome and both have told me there are no infected files in my computer. Nobody has access to this computer accept for me so I know that no one in my house put anything on here. Any ideas on a way to see what command prompt is doing?
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Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you're asking.– Community BotJan 10, 2022 at 18:36
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cmd.exe does not do this, so something has gone wrong with your operating system or things you installed to it.– JohnJan 10, 2022 at 18:38
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@John is there a way to see exactly what it is doing.– SourJan 10, 2022 at 19:01
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cmd.exe is built in and does not cause issues. Consider a Windows 10 Repair Install from the Microsoft Media Creation Link.– JohnJan 10, 2022 at 19:40
2 Answers
This behavior does not happen in windows, so there is something or someone that is causing an application to start that shows the command prompt window.
It might be someone installed something just to mess with you. Might be a virus but viruses are usually more subtle and not in-your-face, without asking for some money (aka ransomware).
I'm a professional developer so I would try and isolate the situations when this happens.
Try and isolate the problem
- Can you get it to happen if your not connected to the internet (disable your LAN card or WIFI) and see if it happens.
- If it does then you know it's something that is on your computer.
- Might be a scheduled job.
- Might a virus that is in something you are running.
- Run something else and see if it still happens.
Check tasks that automatically get started
Use autoruns.exe from SysInternals. See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/autoruns. This identifies all of the registry keys used at system startup to start processes.
Check out Task Scheduler to see what jobs are being run periodically and verify that nothing strange is scheduled.
Run Monitoring tools to see if you can catch it "in action"
- Run monitoring tools to see if you can identify the activity before/after the event occurs. I've used is SysInternals Process Monitor for this. It records every program that starts and every event that happens (by default). You can find it here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon. It was owned by SysInternals, and Microsoft bought the company/tools years ago.
After starting procmon.exe, it will immediately begin recording activity. After you see the popups happen, type Ctrl+E in procmon.exe to stop further events, and then click on the binoculars (search icon) and type in cmd.exe and you'll find where cmd.exe has been launched.
Record the date/time/timestamp of where the occurred and then search for activity after it. This will take a fair bit of time if you've never used it, but from this you can search backward to see if there is something that is causing this.
Reinstall
- Re-install. Yeah it's drastic, but that's what the larger companies and security professionals do. It's just not worth our time to try and find out how you've been owned/hacked/gotten-a-virus. All important data is backed up and you're OS is re-installed from scratch to get you back up and running. I understand this isn't something you can do.
Take it to Security Professional
- Don't want to re-install. Take your computer to a computer security specialist (like Best Buy Geek Squad, or similar) that can remove viruses from your computer. They might be able to clear the virus or task that is causing this to happen.
Those are some ideas. This is a challenging problem, and you're the only one who has the patience and time to spend troubleshooting.
All of these things are easier if you're trained windows security expert (I'm not) but do-able if you have the time/patience and willing to learn about all this stuff.
If these console windows originate from CMD.EXE launch you might try setting AutoRun registry key with regedit or set from a CMD or Powershell running as the Admin user. Check what is there first:
reg QUERY "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Command Processor\AutoRun"
reg ADD "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Command Processor\AutoRun" /t REG_SZ /v pause
This will make every new CMD window autorun pause - waiting for you to press any key, unless the caller has used CMD.EXE /D.
