I am already doing a manual backup of files in Safe Mode because the darn whatzit acts up in regular mode. (Windows Easy Transfer does not work in Safe Mode).

Even though I am doing a system recovery I am still baffled by what this is. I have worded the question every which way for Google but it just doesn't understand.

I had some old files I was sorting. They are from a free data recovery program that I used several years ago - everything was sorted into 600+ folders.

I was down to under 200 - yay! - then, as I had done with others, I clicked on one jpg thumbnail to see if it was a real pic or a stock photo. It opened - and kept opening and opening and opening, would not close...yikes! Shut down, got into Safe Mode (had to look SM for Win8 method up on this laptop) and ran scans. Nothing found - but the bug was still there.

Rootkit?

Any ideas?

Thanks!

(I ran trend rootkit buster - scanned VERY quickly and found nothing. Will try it again after the recovery process is done.)