Hi, Hopefully this post will help someone somewhere and save a few days of their lives (which they will never get back) ISSUE : Suddenly and at boot time my very old and trusty laptop, which I know backwards and have changed many components on, over the years, including even at the component level, started flashing a weird and very unexpected ^[ set of characters at boot time. If you are allergic to long winded drivel you can safely stop reading here and scroll all the way down to the last para; for this particular issue and it's solution. If you are still reading, here follows what you may probably do (and what I actually did) - feedback and comments are most welcome :) So, habits. New BAD habits. use Google and 10 years of accumelated Fu. Gots to be that I am p0wned, and definately not just p0wned BUT actually p0wN3D, must be nation state or someone that knows what I know. but how? the resources are so very thin at those levels and there has to be a springboard. (we still need to make a name for that, or maybe there is a name and I just don't know aboot it as I haven't been on irc for over 15 years :) ) switch to new clean device, update all externals, update all passwords, planetary. run through all systems, logs, all the usual stuff, weird activity, weird network activity (uhm Donald and ethanol soaked dude? seriously?) - anyway, dump data, super paranoid, block half of North America (the island bits, you know who you are :) All of Korea, China, India, Russia and everything with a pulse... So, that day well spent, back to the Acer device... lemme see who this was and how I can waste a day, or more, of their lives and see how they like bad medicine. With REVENGE in mind, a spare week and few retirement zero's tucked away safely i start the next wasted day... Find the entry point. First step setup spare device, copy everything. But I do not have spare model laptop, so in this case the plan is to work on same frame, on copies ( I even have extra mainboard, so am good to go, or so I thought...) On the duplicated device flash bios. same issue. At this point I made a very basic rookie mistake. Instead of following the frame inputs I jumped to disk. Impatience, usually a thing of youth, but I think it is something that is and has been growing in culture for a decade or so now, EVERYWHERE. We are all getting much less tolerant and much less patient. We are in the drive trough of live and we want it now. not just now, now. and fsck.vfat you if you do not think like me, look like me or even if I just do not 'feel' you. One can get lost, very easily, on disks and OS. So, on disk, the issue is much more prominent. **IT** ==== (IT, the clown kid killing thing) is here. The HORROR is real. Terror, chaos and consternation, I struggle to kill it. it is under my bed. It is intermittently sending inputs to kernel as me, form my keyboard. I spend lots of time and lots of effort but I simply cannot find any reason, in code, anywhere, how this is happening. I read a lot of code (btw - we, all of us, should be so grateful to lgpl, shared libraries and the code we all use, even today, even when some of the dude's are dead already, they are remembered, in code, forever) wow, I have typed a lot, let's end this? this is the last para, so the solution to this problem is : My wife's hair dryer (after about a minute confirmed the issue) Over the years the high quality Acer keyboard was replaced only once, about 5 years ago but the new keyboard seems to have had dust (or gunk?) buildup on the bottom left side ctrl and one or two other keys. These would become intermittently stuck and produced chaos, horror and terror. If your keyboard is a few years old, even if you clean and wipe it, gunk and dust can become trapped. Solution: Take out, open the keyboard and clean properly. *sigh* yes, I am an idiot. but I am sure that there are many other idiots out there. In fact I happen to be convinced that idiots are now the majority and we RULE! :)