I hate pop-ups, need help to get rid of them

[Texan]

A few nights ago, my oldest son used my computer to go to a "guitar" website. The next morning, my computer started going crazy with pop-ups. I don't even have to have I.E. open and two or three pop-ups will still occur every several minutes, so I assume that somehow my son hit a wrong button and loaded some type of application that allow this to happen.

One that keeps appearing is "AdserverPro.Net" Also, every 10 minutes or so, the application "Browserwise" wants to load (I cancel the loading.) From time to time, a pop-up appears that asks me if I'm tired of pop-ups. It wants me to click on a link for a program that will eliminate pop-ups on my computer. Under the circumstances, I surely don't trust that link.

Can anyone tell me what to do, or where to look, in order to stop the insanity. Yes, I've deleted all my temporary internet files (several times) as well as my history files and temp files. I don't really know what to look for beyond this. I'm running Windows 2000.

Thanks for the help.

 

[miles]

http://download.com.com/3120-20-0.html?qt=popup&tg=dl-2001

Download.com website has several different popup programs you can download. A few are free. I use PopNot and it works fine.

You may also want to download AdAware to clean out any spyware you may have. It's on Download.com, too.

 

[Guest]

Ctrl-Alt-Delete

Always works...

 

[JerseyBoy]

you may also want to run msconfig in the 'run' part of your start up menu and select the startup tab...uncheck things like 'Save' and any other programs you believe are popups

 

[phrodeau]

Does the Task Manager show what program might be causing them?

Check your Temp files manually to make sure everything is deleted. Sometimes the Delete Files command leaves things behind.

Search for all files created or modified in the past (insert pertinent time frame here), and look for .exe's.

Also check Start Up to see if anything was added there.

 

[Weird Harold]

Can anyone tell me what to do, or where to look, in order to stop the insanity.

Start with running Ad-Aware it should find and remove the trojan that's been downloaded to your system.

If Ad-Aware can't find the culprit, you'll need to manually search your start menu and registry for the problem program.

Hitting CTRL-Alt-Del should give you a list of running tasks to get an idea of what the program is named.

DrWatson is another tool for finding out what is running on your system. Start Drwatson and then click on the Drwatson icon inthe system tray to take a "snapshot" of what's running on your system. Click the details button to review everything that running and where it loaded from.

 

[medjay]

I use panicware pop-up stopper. Stops pop-ups dead in their tracks. I've had it for over six months.

 

[Sheaf_Beast]

pop-up-stopper

here is that link to pop-up-stopper
http://www.panicware.com/index.html

 

[Weird Harold]

PS: you might want to disable "Active Desktop" Leaving your desktop active is just begging people to setup your desktop to your tase, and add things like pop-ups to it.

 

[Texan]

I had to step away from my computer for a little while, but I want to thank you guys for giving me some excellent places to start trying to fix the problem.

I had to thunk myself for not thinking of a couple of them, but I'll see what I can do to get it corrected.

Sincere thanks.

Texan

 

[miles]

Unless you know what you're doing, tinkering with the registry is very dangerous.

 

[Lancecastor]

Kazaa.

If he's into guitars, he's into music, and if he's into music, he's probably been to kazaa...if so, your pop ups are probably because of spyware installed on your system by Kazaa and their advertisers.

Their "cookies" are very persistent, but here's a site that will help de-kazaa your machine:

http://www.cexx.org/adware.htm

 

[Texan]

Re: Kazaa.

If he's into guitars, he's into music, and if he's into music, he's probably been to kazaa...if so, your pop ups are probably because of spyware installed on your system by Kazaa and their advertisers.

Their "cookies" are very persistent, but here's a site that will help de-kazaa your machine:

http://www.cexx.org/adware.htm

Ironically, he uses Kazaa on "his" computer, but not on my computer. Yet, his computer doesn't have the pop-up problem that mine HAD (until I downloaded "AdStopper" software from the site recommended by miles.) Thanks.

The morning after my son used my computer, I checked the history and temp internet files, and it was clear that he had only been to a couple of guitar related sites. He wanted to use my computer because I have a printer hooked up to my computer. Somehow in the process, he managed to download the program that was producing the pop-ups.

After downloading and installing the "AdStopper" software, I haven't had a pop-up appear yet.

I also ran my anti-virus program and it didn't find anything.

Thanks everyone.

Texan