Spontaneous popups in IE6 (continued)

[Jonathan Sachs]

When I last visited this topic, my system was plagued with popups from a
variety of sources. I had installed Ad-Aware SE Plus, and it removed lots of
nasties every time I ran it, but the pop-ups continued. One expert explained
that I would have to run a battery of a half dozen or so different programs
to protect my system from various types of threats. I replied that I would
deal with that when I have time -- still a week or two in the future, at
least.

I later found that much of my problem was caused by the fact that Ad-Aware
it failed to configure itself properly, and the real-time protection feature
was not activated. I began activating it manually each time I started the
system, and things were peaceful for several days.

I found that after I installed Ad-Aware I could no longer leave messages in
Hewlett-Packard's user forum. It said my browser (Internet Explorer v6,
under WinXP) was not accepting cookies, even though security was set to
"medium" and no other site had such a problem. IE's "Options" box indicated
that the site was not marked for special handling -- no sites were -- so I
had to conclude that Ad-Aware was blocking it. That was irritating, but not
an immediate problem.

Now I'm getting the same thing when I try to log in to eBay. That IS an
immediate problem -- I have auctions ending tonight (as a seller), and I
have got to log in to service them.

My earlier request for support from LavaSoft was ignored. I also posted a
question in LavaSoft's user forum, but no one responded. I do not think I
can expect any aid from that quarter -- and certainly not in time to fix the
problem tonight.

Any ideas how to fix this? If I can't correct it within the next few hours
I'm going to have to uninstall Ad-Aware, and if that doesn't help, I'll have
to restore my last system backup, something I don't look forward to.

 

[Don Varnau]

Hi,
Uninstalling Ad-aware would be a good first step, for now. But before doing
that, run CWShredder, Ad-aware and Spybot (in that order) to see what
malware is still on your machine. See:
http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/unwanted.htm

Re the cookie settings- try low or accept all. See if that helps with ebay.

Are you sure that another privacy/security type program isn't causing some
of the problems? Run MSCONFIG> Startup and uncheck programs that might be
interfering with IE. Restart. Any improvement?

For blocking the occasional webpage generated pop-up (not coming from
malware on your machine) the Google toolbar works well.
http://www.google.com/options/index.html Two other easy and free security
tools are the HOSTS file from http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm and IE
Spyad from http://www.aumha.org/freeware/freeware.php#ie-spyad

You *should* install the XP SP2 update, but I would get these problems
resolved first.

Hope this helps,
Don