Popus causing explorer 100% in Task Manager

[Guest]

A friend of mine has a wierd problem, He will connect tothe internet (IE6 or
Firefox, doesn't matter how). After 2 minutes, he gets 6 popup windows. He
has a modified hosts file so the windows are blank, but they popup anyway.
If he leaves the computer alone and, 2 minutes later, he gets another 6
windows. He has a popup blocker program installed, and Firefox is setup to
block popups. Doesn't help. He can even close the browser completely, and
he will still get popups. His Win2000 and IE are up to date, and he is
running McAfee anti-virus and anti-spyware up to date, and they have shown no
problems.

Also, when this happens, if he has Task Manager open, he will see iexplorer
popup 6 times, as the popup windows open, then the program disappears from
Task Manager, even though the windows are still open. Whether he closes them
or not, 2 minutes later, he gets 6 more windows. If he starts closing them,
the second or third time they popup, all of a sudden explorer.exe in Task
Manager jumps to 100% resources, and his computer basically locks up.

Any ideas? This is driving him nuts. As I said, his anti-virus and
anti-spyware say nothing is wrong. Thanks in advance.

 

[Dave Patrick]

You'll need to search out and destroy the malware.

--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

 

[NewScience]

Also make sure that he doesn't have multiple popup blockers active. IE6 has
one built-in and McAfee has one (as well as Ad Blocker).

It took me a week to discover that if McAfee Popup blockers are on and IE6
blockers are on, IE6 will open blank pages.

However, I have not seen 6 at once. I would run something like Lavasoft's
Ad-Aware Free Personal Edition.

Another is Registry Mechanic from www.pctools.com, specifically look in the
BHO scan area.

 

[Guest]

He has run Adware and it says everything is clean. I was hoping someone
could give me some idea what to look for. There isn't anything running in
Task Manager that looks out of place, and there isn't anything strange
showing up in Add/Remove programs.

 

[NewScience]

The information I gave you, if there is problems, will not show in any of
those steps/options you said you did.

BHO's do not show up in Ad-aware, not Task Manager

Mulitple Popup blockers on don;t show up either unless you specifically look
in McAfee Privacy Configuration Options and IE6/IE7 options?

Did they do any of this?

 

[Guest]

He only has the McAfee Virus Scan and Firewall. He doesn't have the Privacy
program. I have run the registry mechanic on my system just for checkles.
What is the BHO section? I don't see anything labeled that.

 

[NewScience]

Sorry, I sent you the wrong program name. The program is Registry Fix from
www.registryfix.com

Run it, and select Advanced Options, then Browser Helper Object Manager.
You can manually look at the BHO's (Browser Helper Objects) in the registry
under:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Extensions
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Browser
Helper Objects