ctfmon.exe Information

ctfmon.exe

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What is it?
Language bar AKA Alternative User Input Services - ctfmon.exe

What does it do?
ctfmon.exe - it's an ever annoying helper tool that comes rather unexpectedly at times and liked by nearly nobody.

Ctfmon.exe monitors the active windows and provides text input service support for speech recognition, handwriting recognition, keyboard, translation, and other alternative user input technologies.

Loads of information can be found on microsoft's site here.

Unless you're using anything in that list above you'll want to stop this file from loading!

How do I get rid of it?
There's been a number of threads in our forum as well as others about this. A typical thread can be found here.

control panel --> regional and language options --> languages tab --> details button --> language bar button

Virus Precaution:
Just like so many of the other files I've written about so far, ctfmon.exe is located in the c:windowsSystem32ctfmon.exe. At the time of this writing there isn't any spyware, viruses or anything like that masking itself as this file. If you find any info on one then please let me know!

Fix ctfmon.exe Errors: Free Scan

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ctfmon.exe is a Windows System File and should be in a system directory. If it is then this application is safe.

Startup DB Entries:
( 1 ) "Supports multiple languages and alternative method inputs in Windows and MS Office. The language bar is displayed alongside the System Tray if more than one keyboard layout is enabled (for switching input languages) or for example if speech is selected as an alternative input for MS Office or Notepad. Required to support advanced text services (such as right to left text) for East Asian users. Can be disabled via Start → Control Panel → Regional and Language Options → Languages → Text Services and Input Languages → Advanced → System Configuration → Turn off advanced text services (which also turns off the language bar). See also here and here. Can also cause problems with some other programs if left enabled - see here for such an example"
( 2 ) "Family KeyLogger keystroke logger/monitoring program - remove unless you installed it yourself! Note - this is not the legitimate ctfmon.exe process associated with alternate text inputs which is always located in %System%. This one is located in a ""CTF"" sub-folder"
( 3 ) "Added by the RAIDYS TROJAN! Note - this should not be confused with the valid Office XP file see here"
( 4 ) "Supports multiple languages and alternative method inputs in Windows and MS Office. The language bar is displayed alongside the System Tray if more than one keyboard layout is enabled (for switching input languages) or for example if speech is selected as an alternative input for MS Office or Notepad. Required to support advanced text services (such as right to left text) for East Asian users. Can be disabled via Start → Control Panel → Regional and Language Options → Languages → Text Services and Input Languages → Advanced → System Configuration → Turn off advanced text services (which also turns off the language bar). See also here and here. Can also cause problems with some other programs if left enabled - see here for such an example"
( 5 ) "Detected by Kaspersky as the TURKOJAN.IL BACKDOOR! See here. Note - this is not the legitimate ctfmon.exe process associated with alternate text inputs which is always located in %System%. This one is located in %Windir%"
( 6 ) "Added by a variant of the IRCBOT BACKDOOR! Note - this is not the legitimate ctfmon.exe process associated with alternate text inputs which is always located in %System%. This one is located in %Windir%"
( 7 ) "Added by a variant of the IRCBOT BACKDOOR!"

Disclaimer

Every attempt has been made to ensure the information about ctfmon.exe is accurate but alot of malware applications try to pose as valid applications. If it is something other than what was posted above please leave some feedback in the forum.
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User Comments

Bob Stettina I'm on XP/SP2+allcritupdates. My "kosher" CTFMON.EXE is 15,360 bytes long, and exists in both \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 and \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DLLCACHE. I just (today) got nailed by a `bot-swarm. That'll teach me I wound up with (literally) hundreds of quite pernicious AdWare and `bots. 10 hours later, I think I finally nailed the last "varmint"... a CTFMON.EXE that was ~4MB long. Yep. 4MB. It was located in \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DLG. I was getting "rogue" instances of IE, trying to go to "strange places". That's gone now (along with the DLG directory, and its contents). We'll see if "it" is all finally dead. PS: I'm reluctant to just "disable" the "real" CTFMON.EXE, just because... I'm never sure when uSoft is telling the whole truth about anything... or, if they even know it!
Richard Burkhart Thank you. Everytime I bootup from scratch an error comes up saying (ctfmon.exe) failed, so I guess that's good but now I kow it's not important, so that's even better. I'll just do a search and eliminate all copies of the thing.
William See It was said in the article that ctfmon should only be found in c:\windows\system32. I have been experiencing problems with an error window popping up with this file being the error. After performing a search I have found this file in three directories. They are: C:i386: Ctfmon.exe C:\Windows\Prefetch:Ctfmon.exe-05E57A5E.pf C:\Windows\System32Ctfmon.exe Is there potential danger in having the file in the other two directories other than Windows\System32?

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