The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 3 (of 5)

Popup out of nowhere?

I occasionally get a popup ad while online, usually from a stupid US immigration company.

The window title and icon is "Internet Explorer", and it's listed in Task Manager as IEXPLORE.EXE

But I'm running Firebird, so who spawns the damn thing?

How to stop this?

Alex.ro
Tuesday, January 20, 2004

You might have a Gator or something. Try running AdAware (sp?).

ice
Tuesday, January 20, 2004

Definitely Spyware. Aside from Ad-Aware, Spybot Search and Destroy will also do the trick. Better to run both actually.

Tal Rotbart
Tuesday, January 20, 2004

It sucks, I had a Winshow in my registry as an IE explorer helper. It was taking forever, and maybe calling back to it's home base. I took it out by hand. I still get weird pop-ups past my pop-up blockware. Adware isn't fining this stuff, and I am getting can't find server messages, then I have to hit refresh, and I'll see the page.

I need to buy a virus scanner. Funny thing is, I never even had one on my PC before, just a firewall. These ad trojans or whatever, are really bothersome. It went away, now it came back.

Brian R.
Tuesday, January 20, 2004

Yup. Go to lavasoft and download the free version of AdAware. Odds are about 10:1 you'll nail it there.

dir at badblue dot com
Tuesday, January 20, 2004

Advanced Uninstaller Pro can remove, enable and disable helper objects, plugins and toolbars for Internet Explorer.

http://download.com.com/3000-2096-10227263.html?tag=lst-0-1

Jarred
Tuesday, January 20, 2004

The good thing is, it can forcefully remove them.

You see what IE plugins/helper objects/toolbars are installed on your system, and can disable them individually.

I have killed annoying browser hijackers several times this way.

In order to successfully remove browser hijackers, you have to also look carefully at the Windows startup programs - a lot of spyware also place an entry there, in order to get themselves to run every time the system starts.

Jarred
Tuesday, January 20, 2004

Ad Aware is good, Spybot is better, run them both. Also get a good software firewall like Zone Alarm and antivirus like AVG. All freeware.

Look in your task manager and Google any suspicious processes.

www.MarkTAW.com
Tuesday, January 20, 2004