BIOS IS ALTERED AND KEYBOARD REMAPPED WHEN RECEIVING TRADING CARDS

[ICE 9]

I just recently started getting steam trading cards, staring a few days ago.

Today, I noticed that my keyboard was getting remapped somehow. This would occur while I was logged into steam - usually while I was playing a game - requiring me to exit and re-start my computer. Later today, I was able to correlate instances of unauthorized keyboard remapping with the receipt of new steam trading cards.

When I first starting getting trading cards I would get, at most, 1 trading card a day. It did not cause any problems then - I believe because the cards were received while my computer was turned off. Then, yesterday evening, I noticed my keyboard starting to act up while playing a game. I exited the game and reset my computer, but then it got worse.

This evening my keyboard kept getting remapped repeatedly (3 times) during a 2 or 3 hour period. I had to exit from steam to restart my computer each time. That's when I noticed (after the third instance) that I had also received 3 more trading cards during the same 2 or 3 hour period,

I also discovered that my bios settings were being changed, requiring me to reset bios as well.

This has only occurred while I was either playing a game in steam, or while I was AFK (but still logged into steam). It does not occur when I am not logged in to steam.

How do I unsubscribe from trading cards? They have rendered my steam account unusable.

If there is no way to rid my account of this debacle, I will have no choice but to leave steam.

[ICE 9]

Origineel geplaatst door Zero, Dark Knight:

and what game is it you refer to?

I will provide this info later, because I think it is something you guys should know about. However, There are extenuating circumstances, and I don't want to drop names or go into detail until I vet this.

I CAN say that I have been running an earlier version of the suspect game, which for some reason was never updated. This may be the cause of the problem... ...or it may not. I am awaiting download of an update and will confirm or eliminate this as the problem and report the results here.

This should only take an hour or so.

[ICE 9]

Origineel geplaatst door =Snappy=:

Origineel geplaatst door Satoru:

Honestly that just tells me that you have a virus

Lol.

Yeah, malware at least. Norton 360 is looking to sap your system resources and take your money. Functionally no different from a stealth-installed crypto miner.

If it is a virus, it is a virus that resides in one game, so I doubt this. However, I am not ruling this out just yet.

[ICE 9]

OK. That didn't work. Downloading BETA (something tells me that won't work either).

[ICE 9]

BETA won't launch. Reloading orig. If that doesn't work, I will have to purchase the latest version.

[isomorphic_projection]

So your bios is altered, and your keyboard remapped itself. Do you have an asus board, and armoury crate running, maybe also some rgb software, nvidia experience. But armoury crate will alter your bios, when it comes to your gpu.

[ICE 9]

Yes. I have an ASUS gaming laptop /w AMD RYZEN 9 chipset (I forget the model number). Windows 10 also recently updated. Windows 10 and ASUS computers have a history of compatibility issues. Windows 10 Updates often require resetting bios to defaults. However the last update didn't have any problems. And I started experiencing problem with this one game only recently coincidental with the launch of Steam's trading cards. Now I have isolated the problem to one game, which is now causing me to speculate that this might be a case of planned obsolescence. The Devs don't like competing against themselves, which is what you get when there are earlier versions floating around.

In any case, it seems like you are suggesting that the problem may be local to my computer. I'm not saying that it isn't, but why then is it that the symptoms only occur with one game and not any other games or devices. And the problem does not occur when I am online accessing the internet for other things.

[❤ Sly Succubus ❤]

Origineel geplaatst door ICE 9:

Yes. I have an ASUS gaming laptop /w AMD RYZEN 9 chipset (I forget the model number). Windows 10 also recently updated. Windows 10 and ASUS computers have a history of compatibility issues. Windows 10 Updates often require resetting bios to defaults. However the last update didn't have any problems. And I started experiencing problem with this one game only recently coincidental with the launch of Steam's trading cards. Now I have isolated the problem to one game, which is now causing me to speculate that this might be a case of planned obsolescence. The Devs don't like competing against themselves, which is what you get when there are earlier versions floating around.

In any case, it seems like you are suggesting that the problem may be local to my computer. I'm not saying that it isn't, but why then is it that the symptoms only occur with one game and not any other games or devices. And the problem does not occur when I am online accessing the internet for other things.

Some games are...lets not say badly made, but for example when I close Antimatter Inc, sometimes my computer says its an unathorized attempt at accessing my PC, whats likely going on is upon detecting a false flag the PC set itself into a safe mode and often times in doing so it defaults some settings, for example if you open task manager you may see some tabs you standardly turn off or hide, have returned, and this only happened after I got that false positive upon closing a game due to system medic deciding to freak out without telling me.

This is a rather rare case and stems from sometimes either a game, the RAM/Video Card running out of space and rarely, and I do mean very rarely a corrupted set of files, unless something has altered Steam itself, Steam wont send files it does not have confirmed as 'clean'

[ICE 9]

Or my computer has an undetectable virus that selectively picks on this one game (BTW it's MechWarrior 5 Mercenaries by PGI).

I had been refraining for getting the latest update / DLC because each time the devs do that, mods become inoperable (and the game is basically useless without mods)


In any case, I just completed my final test and verified that the problem occurs no matter which program version of the game I use - which pretty much eliminates the game itself as the culprit. Otherwise, other gamers would be reporting the same problem.

So, it's back to square one.

I'm currious tho. What made you think of ASUS? i'm thinking I need to look at Armory Crate now.

[ICE 9]

OK. I am back. I went out and picked up a new gaming computer and wifi router. However, the new router - which required a smart phone app to set up - identified a possible problem with my smart-phone, and indicated that a cell-phone app was generating bogus data and might be attempting to emulated the wifi router. I spent the remainder of this day trying find someone at the phone company that could verify / refute this.

The problem was eventually solved by going to technical support, There they were able to verify that there was no malware on my phone, and the likely cause was a way-word cellphone app. After turn of as many aps that I could, the problem appears to have gone away. In the meantime, I have now a new gaming PC and wifi router.

Hopefully this fixes the problem.

So what was causing my keyboard to be remapped?.. ...I have no clue. Right now my number one priority has been to get back on-line so I can start resetting password on all of my applications - including steam.

[ICE 9]

Problem appears to be solved for now. Before I changed passwords, however, I went back to my old configuration and found it had become erratic and was impossible to connect to my old router.

At one point, I thought that I might have a noisy mouse cable (logitech G305) that was somehow causing my LGHUB to remap my keyboard. However, I was able to eliminate this as possible cause by installing the G305 mouse and LGHUB app in my new system... ...It worked fine.

Conclusion? My best guess is that my old computer and wifi had been compromised. It could be that whatever virus it had was using the LGHUB app to remap my keyboard, but I lack the expertise to make this determination. Eventually, I plan to take the old computer in to see if it can be rehabilitated, but right now that is low on my priority list. As a precaution, I am using the G305 mouse without the LGHUB (now uninstalled).

[ICE 9]

Origineel geplaatst door isomorphic_projection:

So your bios is altered, and your keyboard remapped itself. Do you have an asus board, and armoury crate running, maybe also some rgb software, nvidia experience. But armoury crate will alter your bios, when it comes to your gpu.

Armory Crate and LGHub (for logitech G305 mouse). Both of these can remap the keyboard.

I have a new computer an wifi now, so I no longer have Armory Crate. I still use my G305 mouse, but LGHub has been uninstalled.

Problem appears to be fixed.

Thanx