Explorer screen appears at AOL welcome screen

[tom]

Help! I'm running Windows 2000 Prof. When I log on to
AOL, an Explorer screen immediately appears completely
over the welcome screen and takes me to sites we've never
visited - usually porn, though sometimes insurance,
drugs... We delete them as soon as they appear, but they
continue to pop up every few seconds, making it
impossible to work on-line. We've run virus checks with
updated Norton '03, changed security settings,
uninstalled and reinstalled AOL, chatted with AOL
techs...all to no avail. Suggestions please?

 

[Kyle]

The the post labeled "Pop-up ads" a few posts beneath
yours from "Jim Boddy", Steve Urbach has your answer.
Briefly, go to www.lavasoftusa.com and download AdAware
Personal edition, or to http://security.kolla.de and get
Spybot S&D. In either case, it is critical that you
update the programs using their built-in "Search for
Updates" functions, then scan and be amazed at how much
garbage you have accumulated. Then use the Fix Problems
button (in Spybot, I think AdAware does it automatically)
to get rid of the junk.

Kyle