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I some days see a cmd.exe opening and typing "echo off", then disappear.

My computer is slow, but I'm not sure if a program running with first line "echo off" would be so slow as to let me see it being typed... That's a reason to believe it's a person.

On the other hand, if someone else log into one's pc, it will open a new session, so you'll not see what he's running, right?

I'm not sure if I should worry.

I'm running Windows 10.

The Student
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    That's what happens if a batch file starts with echo off instead of @echo off, almost certainly a mistake in it. We'd need more information about it to know whether it's legitimate or malicious, though. – Joseph Sible-Reinstate Monica May 26 '20 at 19:42
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    that alone, no harm. But, echo off hides the rest of what it's doing, which could very well be bad, or it could just be a poorly-written startup procedure for something benign like a game updater, keyboard touch control tray app, etc. – dandavis May 26 '20 at 19:51
  • Without knowing what else the script does, there is no way for us to give any more information. You need to do some digging yourself, and identify the application in question. If in doubt, nuke it from orbit. –  May 28 '20 at 11:20

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Seeing echo off in a prompt will only tell you that a batch script is running, and that commands following the echo off will not be displayed in the terminal.

Check your device for any unknown connected USB devices, such as a 'rubber ducky'.

Go through msconfig (Windows Key + R, input 'msconfig' and run it) you can examine the contents of that dialog for any startup scripts.

msconfig dialog

Yevhen Stasiv
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