In this work, we tackle the problem of blind extraction of intermittent sources. Our approach is based on the generalized eigenvector decomposition of covariance matrices and extends previous works in two aspects: by developing a more precise technique to detect inactive periods and by building a more general yet more precise strategy to estimate the vectors that lead to the separation of the intermittent sources. Simulations are carried out to illustrate the effectiveness of our proposal. Key words: blind source separation, intermittent sources, second-order methods, generalized eigenvector decomposition