Pop ups are eating my computer

while enjoying a game of Homeworld 2 this afternoon, my PC spontaniously rebooted.

after it starts back up, all of these GODDAMN POP UPS APPEAR.

i feel saturated by them... consumed. and the funny thing is im not joking. they come up randomly and all advertise for a Pop-up blocker from jimmysurf.com. isnt this sort of shit illegal?

i didnt know i could get this pissed off.

i ran a virus check on my media drive, ran ad-aware, did some registry clean up, and filtered through the program list taking forieng invaders out. then they stop. i thought i had fixed it until i rebooted.

they came back.

this is seriously pissing me off.

has anyone else had this problem?

tEH GOBBLE GOBBAL GOBBLA!!11

1) Shut off Messenger if you're on NT/2K/XP by running 'services.msc' from the run dialog (find the messenger service, disable it and shut it off.)

2) Grab a copy of Adaware from www.lavasoft.de. Free for personal use. Run a deep scan to get all the junk from the registry and active memory.

3) Make sure your computer is up to par with patches and security updates. Make sure superfluous software/services aren't running (eg; Remote Desktop). Also make sure that your machine isn't wormed by recent exploits (namely that blaster thing.) Restart afterward.

You should be popup free afterwards.

Download the google toolbar as it wil forever rid you of pop ups..

Also use the ad-aware program mentioned above.

Scan for viruses with www.trendmicro.com free online virus scan.

Or use AVG Anti-Virus, which is a free anti-virus program.

Eh, I've heard Google Toolbar has spyware. For popup blocking, use Mozilla Firebird. It's simple and it works without using external programs -- plus it's easy to configure sites that you do want popups from.

To kill spyware, download Spybot - Search & Destroy. It's gotten rid of some things even Ad Aware couldn't kill.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lhadatt

Eh, I've heard Google Toolbar has spyware.

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Not quite. You can choose whether to install it with Google's page ranking service enabled (it sends certain URLs back to figure out page popularity,) or without.

I installed it without.

Exactly, you can choose to or not install the feedback/ranking stuff.

I agree, AVG is excellent...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lhadatt

Eh, I've heard Google Toolbar has spyware. For popup blocking, use Mozilla Firebird. It's simple and it works without using external programs -- plus it's easy to configure sites that you do want popups from.

To kill spyware, download Spybot - Search & Destroy. It's gotten rid of some things even Ad Aware couldn't kill.

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Most people in the know seem to agree that to clean things thouroughly to use ad aware AND Spybot.
:D

you guys didnt help a bit, but thanks anyways.

i went through the task manager and looked up all the running programs that i didnt recognize.

turns out this 'winservn.exe' little bastard was causing all the problems. i looked up the application name (Sear 1 MFC) on Google and other people have been having the same problem. i deleted it and now i have no more popups. horray!

oh, and using Mozillia or any sort of pop-up blocker would be rather useless seeing as it's a program thats launching Internet Explorer to bring up the window.

Norton Personal Firewall. Blocks any pop ups whether its from IE or from the stupid dreaded gray windows pop-ups

ZoneAlarm's free firewall is great as well. If anyone ever needs to download AVG, here's the link - http://www.grisoft.com/us/us_index.php