Anyone got an idea why every other page I open (and even sometimes when I don't open a page) I'm getting barraged by popups. Its making my computer run a lot slower. I've done a full system scan for viruses, and I have none (running Norton fully updated). Can't seem to get rid of them. They're even causing IE to crash every so often when they show up. Anyway I can get rid of these things without paying for it?

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Wisdom is the application of knowledge.

Spyware? Use Spybot Search & Destroy or Ad-Aware 6 to remove the buggers

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ZGPC

It's called spyware/adware. You need to download a program like ad-aware 6 or spykiller to scan and delete them from your computer. You can find these programs and many others like it at www.download.com. You can also find popup blockers there as well to help prevent them from popping up so much. The Google Search toolbar is a good program for stopping popups.

-- SavageX

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"...and if you don't like that, then you need to be slugged in the face repeatedly, until my hands are soaked in blood. Have a nice day!"
http://geocities.com/savagex378

Try downlaoding and running both Adaware and SpybotS&D. if that doesn't work, i suggest Opera in place of IE.

By the way, all of these are free, you'd oinly need to pay for donations or pro versions, which are not necessary in the least.

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"No good can ever come from staying with normal people"
-Outlaw Star
"Some people play tennis. I erode the human soul"
-Tycho, Penny Arcade
"I'm a Cannabal-Vegitarian. I will BBQ an employee if there is no veggie option"
-DX:IW
A Knight's Tail
Exile: A Tale of Light in Dark
The Never Ending Story²[/i]

[This message has been edited by Noble Outlaw (edited July 27, 2004).]

I got Ad-Aware. 53 things found and counting. Running a full system scan. Thanks guys, let you know how it all turns out.

Edit: Dang, in the time it took me to write this post it got up to 117.

Edit: And before I could finish my edit it got to 178 new objects. Are these ALL Spyware? How the heck did I get so much trash on my comp? I haven't downloaded that much.

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Wisdom is the application of knowledge.

[This message has been edited by Rogue Leader (edited July 27, 2004).]

Just finished the scan. 181 new objects. Ouch, now wonder my comp is running so slow.

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Wisdom is the application of knowledge.

Wow, that works much better now. I even got a message from one of the pop-up programs saying that some other program had removed it and wanting to know if I wanted it to finish uninstalling itself.

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Wisdom is the application of knowledge.

Get Spybot too. It picks up things Ad-aware doesn't and vice versa.

Also time to get a browser with a pop up blocker, like Firefox

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I'm not an actor. I just play one on TV.

Yep you wanna run them both together.

For instance, and for demonstration purposes only, Spybot will pick up the unique ID of your windows media player. Ad-Aware will not. I think Ad-Aware doesnt like you setting your home page to about:home cause I think it says that that might be a browser hijack attempt... Spybot doesnt pick up that.



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Founder of the Massassi Brute Squad (MBS)

B'tduz: A popular dwarfish game which consists of standing a few feet apart and throwing large rocks at one another's head.

"Yes, it's a bloody flying alligator setting fire to my city!" - His Grace His Excellency the Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes.

Morituri Nolumus Mori

Rogue, you have been away a little too long.

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Have a good one,
Freelancer

Heh, the most that I've ever seen was when my sister ran spykiller on her laptop. She had over 800(!!!).

-- SavageX

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"...and if you don't like that, then you need to be slugged in the face repeatedly, until my hands are soaked in blood. Have a nice day!"
http://geocities.com/savagex378

I ran Mcaffee's Stinger on a friend's machine last week, there 1953 infected files. The scan took nearly an hour.

Yikes

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If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards.

Freelancer: Hey, the two years I was in Mexico I hardly even used a computer. Just once a week to e-mail my family.

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Wisdom is the application of knowledge.

Okay first, stop using IE. Second, STOP USING IE. Third, get AdAware, Spybot, and HijackThis(careful with this one).

IE Alternatives:
Firefox--my personal fav, tabbed browsing, TONS of plugins.
Opera--never tried it, people advocate it, people hate it, unless you wanna shell out 30 bucks (for a browser?) you get an ugly little ad in the middle of your toolbar. There's no real ADVANTAGE to it over firefox except built in radial menus, I think, and mouse gestures. But once again, there are plugins for firefox.

Try both, see which one you like.

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There is no signature

*Ahem*

That ad is in the corner of the toolbar, not the middle, and is only a little text ad like GMAil. no annoying flashy "click here to win an XBox!" crap.

Also, as is the case with me, some people may jsut plain not like the feel of Firefox, or opera, in that case. i suggest trying both.

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"No good can ever come from staying with normal people"
-Outlaw Star
"Some people play tennis. I erode the human soul"
-Tycho, Penny Arcade
"I'm a Cannabal-Vegitarian. I will BBQ an employee if there is no veggie option"
-DX:IW
A Knight's Tail
Exile: A Tale of Light in Dark
The Never Ending Story²[/i]

[This message has been edited by Noble Outlaw (edited July 28, 2004).]

Pie Menus in Opera? Prove it.

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Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow, and did you know
Your stairway lies on the whispering wind.
:wq!

[This message has been edited by GBK (edited July 28, 2004).]

methinks he got the two mixed up

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If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards.

I use Mozilla, and it works fine for me :S

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"Dalton, that pie just moved of it's own accord."

"You must be mistaken, Tess. A pie can't move."

Mozilla=BLOATED

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There is no signature

I.E works fine for me. nothing you can say will make me change my mind. My windows XP computer has only locked up on me once, and even then it was probably me just doing too many things at once just after it booted into windows.

I have not had a BSOD on either this computer or my older computer(win 98) as far as I can remember. I am perfectly happy with windows and microsoft.

So don't give me this crap about not knowing anything and lieing about things, because I truely have never had a BSOD on my XP computer.

Microsoft > *

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Those silly bullets have minds of their own!
Jon`C:Irony is spelling 'quality' poorly.
Spork:Well I think 'Irony is spelling grammar poorly'
Snail racing: (500 posts per line)--@%

Good for you. I mean it's not like IE has glaring security holes, and if you do any shopping online and use IE you're at risk to lose all your precious information to viruses that take advantage of these. Right?

Microsoft !> *

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There is no signature

I do not have XP, but if I remember correctly, it doesn't have a BSOD.

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A little less conversation, a little more action
"This world is made of love and peace!"
"Let's live today, let's live tomorrow, and let's live the day after that, even if it means living in eternal pain."
- Vash the Stampede

Alpha: Fine. Use IE. Its your right, after all...you can use whatever you want. I choose to use Firefox, just like I choose to use Linux. Its my choice. If you want to choose to use crap, you can use crap. I wont try to talk you out of it.

Remember this, though; its only a matter of time before your browser lands on a page infected with an IE virus, and when it does, dont come crawling to me.



It does, but you never see it. XP will reboot itself the instant a crash occurs.

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Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow, and did you know
Your stairway lies on the whispering wind.
:wq!

I just downloaded Firefox. I'm noticing some differences from IE. Most noticable are that images (or maybe just everything) seem to load slower, and, more importantly, there's no click sound! I need that click back! It's how I know things have... been clicked. Is there a way to make it so it plays when I click things?

Oh, and maybe some skin recommendations? Keep in mind, I like blue and black.

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A little less conversation, a little more action
"This world is made of love and peace!"
"Let's live today, let's live tomorrow, and let's live the day after that, even if it means living in eternal pain."
- Vash the Stampede

[This message has been edited by Chaz Ghostle (edited July 30, 2004).]

Then punch it.

Ba-dum PSHH.

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Wise men say that fools rush in where angels fear to tread, so look before you leap, so to speak, because the grass is not always greener on the other side of the hill.

thats a lot easier. It always runs.

on blocking ads/spyware stuff you might also want to try this niffty little programme thats been around for a while.

peerguardian, http://www.methlabs.org/methlabs.htm

the programme itself comes with a blocklist that will block quite a few things but if you want something more complete get a full blocklist update from either through the menus or here....http://www.methlabs.org/sync/ (best one)

carefully which list you download because it will block some "mainstream" sites, (you'll get a connection refused page come up, making you think the server's down or something when infact its peerguardian, easy to check though) you can of course remove them from the blocklist to allow you to access them, just check peerguardian for the IP its blocked and remove it from the list.

haven't got any popups or nasty programmes installed since I got it, add to that firefox and you should be completely protected against all the c**p out there.

GBK: Finally got round to upgrading firefox to 0.9x and got me the pie menus - they're wierd, but I'll stick it out, mainly because I can't remember which mouse gesture extension i had before, and can't be arsed to get them all and figure out which one 'feels' right again!

DISCLAIMER: I've been using XP now for 3yrs-odd, and it's been pretty much a-ok, but IE sucks dead bunnies. And I prefer Opera to FF, but have to use it for gmail at the moment.

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If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards.

one, I dont go to hack sites, porn sites or other sites that have viruses on them. two, it is hard to get infected with a virus when you have an anti-virus program.

Also, to the guy who talked about online shopping, there have been no problems ever experienced by my family when ordering things online.

[edit] are you calling me stupid enough to not notice the computer reseting.

the only auto restets have been due to games messing up (the demo of track mania does this in forest levels).

realy, do you think that all windows users are so stupid that they do not notice when bad things happen to their computer.

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Bill What if these anti-violent-video game people were all killed by a fat italian plumber in a red hat jumping on them repeatedly. Wouldn't that be poetic justice in its purist form?
Jon`C:Irony is spelling 'quality' poorly.
Spork:Well I think 'Irony is spelling grammar poorly'
Snail racing: (500 posts per line)--@%

[This message has been edited by alpha1 (edited July 31, 2004).]

Antivirus packages wont help you against this stuff.




Congradulations, youve had BSODs in XP before.



Not all of them...

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Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow, and did you know
Your stairway lies on the whispering wind.
:wq!

I don't think GBK is going pro-Linux or anti MS, he is just stating facts, and the truth of the matter is that IE is extremely unsafe, you don't need to go to go to porn, hack, ect. Sites in order to get a virus. As for Windows, I have never really had a serious problem with Windows myself, but the biggest reason I don't switch to Linux is because I am afraid it will be to advanced for me...or something.

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Kill Your Idols!

MORE than good, it's a lifesaver. 2241 blocked and counting...

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nil nip nada zip zero naught lip zil

Thats what I love about Massassi. You can leave for two days (I was camping!) and your thread that you thought had died can turn into a huge debate/flame war. Go Massassi! I love you!

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Wisdom is the application of knowledge.

gbk, track mania's glitch was caused by a bug in the game (most likely something to do with a lack of having the forest terrain installed) not a bug in windows.



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Bill What if these anti-violent-video game people were all killed by a fat italian plumber in a red hat jumping on them repeatedly. Wouldn't that be poetic justice in its purist form?
Jon`C:Irony is spelling 'quality' poorly.
Spork:Well I think 'Irony is spelling grammar poorly'
Snail racing: (500 posts per line)--@%

Alpha1; it doesnt matter. Please, for the love of kak, dont turn this into an OS flamewar.

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Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow, and did you know
Your stairway lies on the whispering wind.
:wq!

you are the one who calls people stupid because they use microsoft products.

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Bill What if these anti-violent-video game people were all killed by a fat italian plumber in a red hat jumping on them repeatedly. Wouldn't that be poetic justice in its purist form?
Jon`C:Irony is spelling 'quality' poorly.
Spork:Well I think 'Irony is spelling grammar poorly'
Snail racing: (500 posts per line)--@%

ok, alpha, GBK is asking not to have a debate. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP BEFORE HE SNPAS OUT OF IT!!

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"No good can ever come from staying with normal people"
-Outlaw Star
"Some people play tennis. I erode the human soul"
-Tycho, Penny Arcade
"I'm a Cannabal-Vegitarian. I will BBQ an employee if there is no veggie option"
-DX:IW
A Knight's Tail
Exile: A Tale of Light in Dark
The Never Ending Story²[/i]

Alpha's just "special" up there. It's okay though, he'll eventually get help. Or get admitted. One of the two.

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There is no signature

Die thread, DIE!

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Wisdom is the correct application of knowledge.