[General Questions and Answers] r.dunne:
Greetings. I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, and a Samsung Galaxy Note 9. I also have 2 Dell Windows laptops, one's an older 2017 Inspiron with Win10 Pro and the other is a 2021 Inspiron with Win 11 Pro. I use the Note 20U most of the time and I use the newer laptop more now but still use them both quite a bit.

Every so often, they will just go completely insane on me. It's usually the phone because I have that on me almost all the time, but the laptops aren't immune to the very strange behaviors that happen. It's kind of hard to explain because I don't really know where to start. With the phone, it's weird stuff like the accidental touch protection will virtually render my phone unusable for a time because there will be either a blue or red dotted circle on the screen that will go to wherever I touch the screen when I touch it but will go back to some other part of the screen when I take my finger off but it won't do anything when I touch the screen and I have to hold down the side and volume down buttons until it either powers down or gives me the power options screen. If it shuts down it's better than when it goes to the menu because when it goes to the power options menu. I get stuck there because it still won't recognize my touch or allow me to do anything so I have to hold down the buttons again until it just shuts off. Sometimes that will fix it but only for a few minutes and sometimes the circles will just still be there doing the same thing when the phone reboots. This will go on for hours to a day or 2 and then just not do it for awhile.

That's just one that sticks out to me but it will do other strange things like that to varying degrees and periods. Another one that gets my nerves stressing is it will make random phone and or video calls on either the phone's mobile system, and/or social media apps while I'm just trying to type text to send a message. Sometimes I'll lose full functionality of the touch screen and/or keyboard. Settings will get randomly changed on me... all kinds of very strange, annoying and sometimes damaging things concerning both data loss and personal issues with text messages and media being sent when it wasn't intended to and to other people than who it was intended for.

It's totally nuts and I know I sound totally nuts saying this but it actually seems like my devices are either being possessed or that somebody else is taking some kind of control of my devices. It happens at the same time to one, some, or all of them, it goes on anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days and then it just stops and they all behave for awhile. But then that dreadful day comes when it starts happening again.

I belong to a few forums that deal with device maintenance and various kinds of crapware and security issues and I visit them to keep up with things. I keep my devices updated and maintained fairly well for the common stuff. I take the advise I'm given in the forums, I run the apps they suggest, I run scans for all kinds of things that I read and find out about related to these issues and the devices all come back clean.

This has happened several times over the past 3 years or so and each time similar behaviors. It happens no matter which phone I use or which laptop I use. It even seem like the device(s) "fight" with me in real time.

I'm just a regular dude, I don't have any major stuff going on in my life that I think anyone would give a darn about. I'm not James Bond or some secret spy or witness. I'm not wealthy nor do I have any high, or even mediocre profile anything going on. I'm a construction painter with barely a pot to pee in and I have absolutely nothing highly exciting going on where I think anyone would have the slightest bit of interest in messing with my devices or my life in any other way so I don't see any reason why any entity would have a reason to either.

There are other really weird things that happen too but this is already turning into a long post and I'm tired and can't think of any off the top of my head right now. I just wanted to put this out there to see if anyone recognizes anything similar or has any input as to why this happens and has any other input on how it can be fixed, if it can or anything really. I am just now starting a log on when it happens and for how long and trying to keep better track of exactly what strange behaviors are actually happening but sometimes, and most of the time it's at the worst time because I'll be busy with work or other things going on and I forget what exactly was happening and for exactly how long it was by the time I get to a way to document it.

One last thing about it is that while I'm running scans and changing settings and trying to combat the madness, iy doesn't seem to change anything and sometimes even makes it seem to get worse, and then it just stops out of nowhere and it's like nothing had happened at all. except that I ended up sending a message to the wrong person or sent pictures or a video to someone who it wasn't meant for or I just deleted my entire music folder when I was trying to rename a file. Very very strange and unbelievable stuff, and yet it actually happens, and then just stops.