Spyware is driving me nuts -- Help

[Hamons]

spyware Does anyone have any idea how I can get rid of some hidden spyware on my computer.

I get about 1 pop up every 2 minutes. I leave my computer for about 2 hours and I come back and I have 60 or more ads popped up and it is adding programs to my desktop. currently have 136.

I have tried adaware6 spybot and bulletproof -- none of them can find it.

- Help!

[RIC]

PoPupCop works well for me.

www.popupcop.com

Pestpatrol is another great program for removing un wanted programs in the back ground. Every time you download something from the net they put trojans in you puter. What ever you do not upgrade from free offer to improve your browser-e-mail etc. They all install exec files. BTW I learned the hard way.

[Cos]

Avoid downloading free screen saver programs. Only download popular and trusted software. I also learned my lesson when I first started on the web.

[Hamons]

I am careful -- but apparently somehting got me

[Warren Raymond]

Go to WWW.download.com and the first step is to search for and download Pop-Up Stopper Professional for free. After installing this go back and search for AdAware 6 and download it for free. Pop-Up Stopper will stop unwanted pop-ups ans ad aware will search your computer for files put in your computer for advertising and tracking pourposes. I run AdAware once a day when I start up my computer and it usually finds a file or two. I hadnt run it in a whail and it found 141 files. Good Luck

[LawnGoddess]

Norton Antivirus will find all the spyware and adware on your computer and help you get rid of it. Even their trial version will find it, but I'm not sure if it will remove it. If you choose to try this I can help if you need it.

Cindy

[Rustic Goat]

Do an internet search for a program called 'Spybot'. It's free, is a pretty complete program for finding spy/ad ware on your computer. Doesn't take that long to run the program once installed, and gives details of each item it finds. Which you can then 'fix' to remove or leave alone.

[LawnKing]

If you download the google search bar from google.com it has a pop up blocker works well.I use that and adaware and a firewall.

[yourlawnguy]

I've used "Adaware" and "Spybot" both great and both free.

[Hamons]

adaware and spybot have not worked. They clean it but he problem persisits

[lawrence stone]

What is your operating system?

[Hamons]

windows 2000

[lawrence stone]

Go to conrol panel>Administrative Tools>services>now double click messenger and disable at startup

[Hamons]

No messenger in my services

[lawrence stone]

Ok let's try again. Is this a pop up from a web browser?

[Hamons]

yes. But.... I do not have to have my internet explorer open for it to start opening pop-ups. It opens it by itself.

[LawnGoddess]

Are they mostly gray boxes? And try to get you to buy anything from vitamins or viagra to xxx everything? If so, it sounds like you need a firewall. It is the new generation of popup junk and it is worse than the rest. I turned the XP firewall on and they disappeared. Not sure if 2000 has one or not, but there are many inexpensive ones out there that will solve this particular problem.

Cindy

[gusbuster]

As stone said, do as told. There are two different windows messenger programs. one is the chat variety and the other is used by network admin to tell or give messages on corporate LAN, but is used to send pop ups also. Very common exploitations on win 2000, NT and xp pro.

Also, do you have all Microsoft's security updates?

Adaware, spybot ect... won't necessarily do the job unless you have all security updates installed as these programs work in conjunction.

[The Mowerdude]

I had the same problem a while back. Drove me absolutely bonkers nuts!!

Finally I bough Norton's firewall program even after comcast tech support said it was pretty much worthless. NOT!! I did a low level format and then loaded the firewall. Stopped all popups AND all spyware dead cold. And I've never had a problem with it since.

However, I need to say that a low level format is a bit radical. But in my case, I needed to get rid of all the spyware that was infecting my hard drive and I had a lot of old junk that I wanted to get rid of anyway. So I just made sure that anything that I wanted to save, bot backed up on the zip drive.

[yourlawnguy]

Zone Alarm makes an excelent FREE firewall and as stated before get all your updates.

[nwingate]

Zone Alarm makes an excelent FREE firewall and as stated before get all your updates.


Zone Alarm works great but make sure you download the free version and not the trial version of the commercial package.

Heres a direct link: http://download.zonelabs.com/bin/free/1012_zl/zlsSetup_45_538.exe

[kickin sum grass]

I just installed Mozilla version1.5. It is like internet explorer but has built in pop up blockers. Its function is exactly the same and it will import your favorite links from IE. It is free from www.mozilla.com. So far I went from 2-3 every couple of minutes to 0 in the last couple of hours using it. I also noticed sites poping up much faster. try it, you will like it.

[basstalker]

I was browsin the net the other day, when This pop up appears an states "if your external drives are open you need to download spyware" Just then both my dvd drives opened up, an my computer froze solid after I closed em again. Freaked me right out.

I had to shut off the puter an turn it back on again. "ctrl/alt/delete" didn't work. After I started the puter up again it did the exact same thing. I went into properties in Explorer, and found it had rewritten my homepage address. I changed it back to the original address, and havent had any trouble since. I did download AdDestroyer an havent had any more pop ups.

Who knows whats lurkin in the background though. I am not real computer savy...

[ace00]

Go to www.spywareinfo.com (http://www.spywareinfo.com) for good information on spyware/adware.

[Christian grower]

Ad-aware 6.0 can find all that hidden stuff for you too! got mine at download.com

[NCSULandscaper]

I just installed Mozilla version1.5. It is like internet explorer but has built in pop up blockers. Its function is exactly the same and it will import your favorite links from IE. It is free from www.mozilla.com. So far I went from 2-3 every couple of minutes to 0 in the last couple of hours using it. I also noticed sites poping up much faster. try it, you will like it.

Its www.mozilla.org

I downloaded that and it has Adblock which is simply amazing. That with a combination of mcafee, and spybot have kept me spyware and pop up free.

[mowerman90]

I've never really had much of a problem with spyware or pop-ups because I'm very careful. I run Zone Alarm Pro AND I'm behind a hardware firewall too.
The hardware firewall came with the router I installed when I wanted to network my laptop. Before installing it I would get maybe 5 alerts per day from ZA. Now, it's like I'm completely invisible. Get yourself a router with a firewall, they're cheap insurance.