Helping people with computers... one answer at a time.
If you have speech recognition always enabled it can cause your computer to "go nuts" because of the different sounds it interprets as actual words.
My computer behaves erroneously frequently. It suddenly closes all IE browser windows, opens start menu and repeats this process. OS: Windows XP. In the task manager I saw "sapisvr.exe" during this process sometimes, not all the time.
•
It's a really weird thing to watch - it's almost like your computer has suddenly become possessed. But the question holds a clue: sapisvr.exe.
Chances are, though, the computer is really only doing what you're telling it.
Literally.
•
Sapisvr.exe is Microsoft's Speech Recognition engine. When enabled, it listens to what's coming in on the microphone and attempts to interpret what it hears as words, then enters keystrokes to "type in" those words it heard.
That's nice, in principle, but if it's always enabled it can cause exactly the odd behavior you describe. You make a noise (just about any noise can cause it to think it's heard a word), and keystrokes get entered. Or ambient noise is enough to cause it to try to recognize speech.
Normally this feature should be disabled, but apparently some PC manufacturers or others enable it by default.
To disable:
Go to Control Panel
Click on Regional and Language Options
Click on the Languages tab
Click on the Details button
Click on Speech Recognition
Click the Remove button
And if you're wondering why this could be happening if you don't have a microphone, look again. Many laptops in particular have built-in microphones, and I'm lead to believe that some other computers may as well.
Article C2153 - August 11, 2004
Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he
was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed.
After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers
to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.
There is NO "Speech Recognition" tab or button after Deatila in Windows XP!!!! Useless info!
Posted by: dana at May 17, 2009 4:52 PMThank you very useful , solved the above mentioned problem
Posted by: Tony Wood at April 5, 2010 5:47 PMRegards
Tony
I closed Skype and it stopped.
Posted by: Erick Carrero at April 12, 2010 11:53 AMControl panel controls don't look like that. Taped paper over touchpad, still have problem. As far as I can tell, not running speech recognition, but??? Have Dell Inspirion 1525 with Microsoft wireless mouse. Haven't seen any settings anywhere to allow me to disable either touchpad or speech recognition. This is my parents' computer with Vista. I am 43 with quite a lot of experience with computers. Don't like Vista AT ALL. Mouse jumps everywhere, right button window pops up, clipboard text gets pasted without my telling it to, text gets highlighted and deleted automatically while I'm typing, so have to retype things a LOT. This is FRUSTRATING. Parents don't seem to have as much problem, but I type much more and do more on a computer. PLEASE HELP! I can't use a compute with this problem!
Posted by: MichelleP12 at July 10, 2010 12:41 AMOKAY! PROBLEM SOLVED! I went to the Dell website and found a newer driver for the touchpad. It was dated like 2008 or 2009, but was still newer than the driver that came with this laptop. I installed it (of course after creating a restore point) and afterward in the Control Panel/Mouse, I noticed there was a new tab which said DELL TOUCHPAD. I was finally able to disable the blasted touchpad and go to only using the wireless Microsoft mouse. Hope this helps!
Posted by: MichelleP12 at July 17, 2010 6:55 PM