pop-up hell/floyd vs spyware

[Floyd-the-k]

Hi there. This board was very helpful to me before, when I had a spyware problem.
  I have a similar problem, this time at home. The pc is working very slowly and unwanted pop ups keep appearing promoting gambling, green cards and (the irony) protection against malware.
 I have adaware and spybot and have updated both of them but it`s still happening.
 Can anyone help?

yours technophobically

[Bico]

I used to use a pop-up blocker, but Windows service pack 2 seems to be doing a great job stopping pop-ups on its own, these days.  Have you installed that yet?

It's probably worth running spybot every time you log off the internet, too.

[topshed]

If you're using M$ Internet Explorer, try a different browser. Firefox is great and has a  built-in pop-blocking capability.

Link: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/" target="_blank">Firefox browser

[Quirkafleeg]

Do google searches for specific messages/symptons you can see. So malware is very persistant and needs additional jiggery-pokery on top of adaware/spybot(like hacking the register) to get rid. There are several sites dedicated to this sort of thing as well (can't remember the specifics but try goggling for malware spyware etc)with noticeboards and help files to give you the specifics.

Oh and try and avoid any suspect sites you may have visited recently to avoid re-infecting yourself when you clear it up

[pauljholden]

It can be tough getting rid of spyware - there are a number of things to be done (I've written them in the order I normally do them in).

1 - Download/Buy and then install win xp service pack 2
2 - enable the firewall
3 - Download firefox - use this for browsing.
4 - Download a variety of Anti-spyware packages, www.lavasoft.de - adaware is one, off the top of my head I can't think of the others - but a google search for 'remove spyware' should bring up a few.
5 - run at least two or three times (run once then reboot, run again)
6 - update adaware/anti-spyware stuff often and run often.

Alternately:

Download Win XP SP2, download Firefox.
Disconnect from internet
Reinstall your O/S (more radical than above but much more likely to create a totally clean system)
Use firefox for browsing
(obviously make sure you've got a back up)

Alternatively:

Buy a mac (seriously, as of this writing there are no virus or spyware for the mac and I suspect they're dirt cheap in Japan)


-pj

[Floyd-the-k]

thanks for all that. we have run adaware and spybot about a million times but one persistent thing keeps coming up, so we`ll try some of your other suggestions
 any other good ideas, keep em coming!

yours appreciatively