Ugh. My icon skills...  ;D

Anyway, I still suspect some "security" software to chime in. Is there anything suspicious in Avast's logs?
Other than that ... which .exe did you download (e.g. where and when)?

(Off for the night - Germany here - time zones - will reply later!)

My first AutoHotKey v2 script.

Usage:
Press Ctrl+Space, the current window will be placed on top (and remain there).

Source:

Twitter is centralized, made for easy access (get an account and post stuff). ActivityPub, including Mastodon, is more complicated, both during signup and during actual usage, especially since you can find everyone on Twitter, but not all ActivityPub instances talk to each other.

I registered on Mastodon when still virtually nobody except a few IT nerds was there. It’s quite good for IT rants. Sadly, the wave of Twitter users tries to turn it into just another political network. Ugh.