What should I do about these popups?

Ok my brother took the good HP to college, the Dells got a virus, and I am stuck with my fathers HP laptop for a while. He never complains about the popups he had and I only recently discovered his painfully slowed down computer life. Theres these same popups coming ever few minutes. Las vegas, stay at home jobs, and some adult material. It all comes from Internet explorer. (and we have like 5 popup blockers on it) Ever since I installed Firefox on this laptop, we never used IE again, never accessed it, and still popups from it keep coming. Now I dont know what to do. I asked my dad if he even uses IE and says no. I dont either, so I am thinking about completely removing it from this computer. But is that okay? Does it affect the computer at all? To browse folders, the computer needs exlporer doesnt it? I once went on task manager and terminated explorer, not IE, and the computer kinda froze every time. So back to the main question, is it safe to uninstall IE? I know IE isnt the same as explorer, but the explorer I use to browse files and folders looks like an offline version of IE or something.

Thanks

Most if not all will be adware, so installing and running something like adAware and Spybot should help loads.

There are some real computer experts here, and I'm sure they'll jump in, but it sounds to me as if IE is running in the background. It should not be running at all, and if you are using FireFox, you should not be getting IE popups.


That said, popups can occur in any environment. What popup stoppers are you using? You should also be running the free version of Adaware.

Bill

I would try a spyware killer and see what that does. Perhaps their are virus's on the lappy as well causing it. Best thiung you can do is reinstall Windows. (I did this rather occasionally just for the heck of it :-/ )

Cameron

Thanks for the fast replies. The problem with installing adware programs is that this laptop isnt that fast and couldnt handle the spyware program we had last time. I dont remember the name though I wish I did. We went through many of those programs with no luck. In fact, they seemed to worsen the laptop. Not just because of more space used, but having that program on is a bigger pain. We dont really trust adware programs anymore since they dont even work on our faster PCs. But is it safe to uninstall IE anyway? It takes about 3 seconds for an IE window to close after you click the X.

It does affect your computer over time because those popups create blank files on HD thus slow down your pc. there is only one dirty way to clean this crap as follows:

go start>run
type regedit
Once in registry. Look for folder call HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
open subfolder called SOFTWARE
search do a visual inspection of other folder files in there that you recognize from popup.
Delete those unwanted popup folders.
go edit menu above, choose find feature and type in the name of popup that you think is on your pc. The PC will do a search for entire computer. If it comes up with the file, delete it. proceed with search until the PC can't find anymore files. This is tedious process but it is absolutely neccessary if you want to purge your pc of this dangerous things.

Next time, you must buy PC penicillin antivirus software that can block this popup from coming into your pc. I use it and it is extremely effective. Those pop up contain trojan files. It means they just self replicate until fill up the hard disk.

After you have run the spyware program, you can close it since it will have deleted the malware. just run it once in a while to keep the computer clean

I would also suggest using Zone Alarm (free version). It will tell you the name and locations of any programs that access the internet... You can then rename (or delete) those program(s) that are accessing the internet to serve pop-ups on your PC.

And later uninstall zone alarm once you cleaned up the problem programs (if you don't need a firewall).

-Bill

I just got done disinfecting a friends laptop. It was quite a hassle as it had several spywares that were dug in very deep, requiring boot after boot to eliminate.

If all this computer is used for is browsing or email I would suggest just wiping the drive and reinstalling XP.

If you do, make sure you burn XP SP2 distribution from Microsoft onto a CD so it will be ready to install before accessing the internet.

Also get Spybot, Spywareblaster, IESpyad for prevention.

If you need some more help, just ask here or even go to forums.spywareinfo.com

mgk65 said:

I just got done disinfecting a friends laptop. It was quite a hassle as it had several spywares that were dug in very deep, requiring boot after boot to eliminate.

If all this computer is used for is browsing or email I would suggest just wiping the drive and reinstalling XP.

If you do, make sure you burn XP SP2 distribution from Microsoft onto a CD so it will be ready to install before accessing the internet.

Also get Spybot, Spywareblaster, IESpyad for prevention.

If you need some more help, just ask here or even go to forums.spywareinfo.com

Click to expand...

I second the notion, you can spend countless hours trying to rid it of spyware and still end up with a borked OS.

Want to stop getting crapware?

Install Spybot Search and destroy, install the hosts file, block all pages silently, inmunize.
Install Spywareblaster
Instal Lavasoft Adaware
Install SPYAD database and set to block all in restricted sites and I mean ALL!
Install Firewall, Zone Alarm, Kerio or Norton internet security
Run online Xclean from www.spywareinfo.com online spyware scanner
Install Highjackthis and post results in spywareinfo.com for more help
Install DCommobulator and Unplugnpray, do search
Test firewall defenses and check all ports to stealth.
Check out some of JavaCool software and Merijn software, they post at spywareinfo and wilderssecurity, again search.

That should keep you pretty darn safe.

HTH
AlexGT

DOH!

download all Updates to the Windows OS you have.

Delete all cookies and temporary internet files, cache,

AlexGT

Everyone has their favorite anti-malware programs. I have several installed. I think the only one that runs all the time is my McAfee antivirus. It's also the only one I have set up for automatic updates.

The others only run when I tell them to. I check for updates every few days. If there are any, I download the updates and do a scan.

Well Spywareblaster is different. It doesn't scan. You just download updates and click on "enable protection".

And Microsoft's antispyware beta defaults to doing a scan every morning at 2 am, so I just let it do that.

Microsoft's antispyware also has an Advanced Tools section that does some interesting things. For instance you can examine your hosts file with it. As you click on each entry, it will tell you what it knows about it. Same for the I.E. browser helpers, etc.

I have the Google toolbar installed in I.E., which has a popup blocker that works for me. In addition the latest incarnation of I.E. comes with it's own popup blocker.

I presume you have XP SP2. This should disable messenger service (not the same as instant messaging) and should give you XP's built in firewall.

Yes, it is safe to uninstall IE -- if you even can.
Microsoft didn't make it easy to remove in some installations.

Here are two articles that might be useful.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q293907
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=318378

Get and install "POPUP Stopper" It works flawlessly on all the machines I run. HI have Zona Alarm and antivirus software subscription as well. And Spyware. It's sad but you need it all..

NikolaTesla said:

It's sad but you need it all..

Click to expand...

No, you really truly don't.
Get a decent firewall (hardware preferably) and a decent antivirus and don't download crap like On-line Poker, ESPN games, WeatherBug, Shoppers alert, etc.

After cleaning your machine, switch from IE to something like Mozilla. With IE you're a sitting duck for spyware.