Internet explorer causing crash?

[Guest]

This started back on April 12th. I'm surfing the web using internet explorer, when suddenly my computer seems to freeze up. Opening or closing a window takes at least ten minutes, as opposed to seconds before. Sometimes it just freezes up completely. It even becomes very difficult to turn off, whether by simply hitting 'turn off' or ctrl-alt-delete. Curiously, since this first began to happen my pop-up stopper no longer works with ie- while on it won't let you open any web pages (not the settings, I've checked that). Furthermore, now there's a new toolbar on my ie page- it has its own pop-up stopper button, something called 'isearch', email, 'hot offers'?, etc. I've used both McAfee virus scans and some at panda.com to check for viruses, but have found nothing- I also have all the latest microsoft security updates. Anybody have any ideas- besides reformatting? Many thanks.

 

[Guest]

Sure. It's probably spyware. Do a search on Google for
Ad Aware and download it. Install it, update it to the
latest version file and then do a complete scan of your
system. Remove everything it finds.

-----Original Message-----
This started back on April 12th. I'm surfing the web

using internet explorer, when suddenly my computer seems
to freeze up. Opening or closing a window takes at least
ten minutes, as opposed to seconds before. Sometimes it
just freezes up completely. It even becomes very
difficult to turn off, whether by simply hitting 'turn
off' or ctrl-alt-delete. Curiously, since this first
began to happen my pop-up stopper no longer works with ie-
while on it won't let you open any web pages (not the
settings, I've checked that). Furthermore, now there's a
new toolbar on my ie page- it has its own pop-up stopper
button, something called 'isearch', email, 'hot offers'?,
etc. I've used both McAfee virus scans and some at
panda.com to check for viruses, but have found nothing- I
also have all the latest microsoft security updates.
Anybody have any ideas- besides reformatting? Many thanks.

 

[Hilary Karp]

Check for Spyware:

Cwshredder http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/files/cwshredder.zip
Spybot Search and Destroy http://www.safer-networking.org
Ad-aware http://www.lavasoftusa.com
Spywareblaster www.javacoolsoftware.com/sbdownload.html
HijackThis http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=3155
Bazooka Adware and Spyware Scanner 1.12
http://download.com.com/3000-2144-10247783.html