Quote:
Dear Jack,
Please help me! I think that somebody is hacking my computer! Whenever I open Word or Internet Explorer, my computer starts typing for me. I downloaded Norton Antivirus and it says that I am fine. Who or what is doing this hacking?!?
— Jason
Dear Jason,
The cause of your mysterious unknown problem resides in a program called “sapisvr.exe.” Basically, “sapisvr.exe” is a speech recognition program created by Microsoft and is installed by some manufacturers. After you install Microsoft Office XP or other speech-enabled products by using Microsoft's Speech application programming interface (API), random words or characters may be displayed in Office XP documents or in the Internet Explorer Address bar. This behavior can occur because the speech recognition tool is “listening” to your voice through your computer's microphone and is attempting to recognize what you are saying. In order to remedy this situation, you can turn off the speech recognition software.
— Go to Start Menu -> Control Panel -> Regional and Language Options
—Look under the Languages tab, click on the button labeled “Details” under “Text services and input languages.”
—Under Installed Services, select Speech Recognition and click the button “Remove.”
—Click “OK” to apply the changes.
—You may need to restart your computer for the changes to take effect.
There may come a point when you want to enable speech recognition. In this case, take the following steps:
—Right click on the Office XP Language bar and select “Settings.”
—Click “Add.”
—Select English under “Input Language.”
—Click to select the Speech Recognition check box, and the click “OK.”
Now you know how to turn on and off the speech recognition engine. The speech recognition engine is fairly accurate, so you can experiment with typing by speaking.