movie downloads causes me to be knocked-off and states that a catastrophic error

[mo mayorga]

A few things are happening with the XP that I bought 2
weeks back. First I have never had so many pop-ups as
with this system,even my old 97 HPPavillion 8240 never
had that many.This may be AOL's fault partially, even
with the browsers filter turned on. Secondly we are
getting a HUGE amount of Porn making it's way into the
system. Today I even was working offline with no
phoneline connected(don't laugh) when I tried to shut the
notebook down here pops up a Porn site. Luckily my kids
weren't too close by. I had to shut it off abruptly as I
could not close the window. What's up with this.My kid is
receiving porn and he is block up to the teen level only?
Then about 6 days back I tried to open a movie download
and it started to open and play then the screen went
black an a large message that says that a catostropic
event error has occurred(never stays on long enough to
save or read) flashes, at that point I am bumped offline
and it asks if I want to reconnect. I thought that it
might be a bad or infected download. I have tried it with
other downloaeds and it does the same thing. I can not
download anything now although when I got it 3 weeks back
it was fine. What should I be looking for? Is there a fix
or is it back to the store to get it fixed? HELP!!!!!!!
Mo in CA

 

[Rowan]

Where to begin?

The pop-ups are an indication that you do not have a firewall enabled. Go

to Help and Support and enable your firewall.

You only get porn popups as a result of visiting porn sites. I have never

gotten one porn popup, spam, etc. If I had a list of "safe" porn sites, I
would share it with you. Perhaps you could ask around.

Since your movies did download OK in the past, and you have left yourself

open to spyware, viruses, etc. it is safe to assume that your "new" computer
is now clogged-up with God-knows-what.

It could be worse. At least you did not get a totally disabling virus.

!. Firewall
2. Run Spybot and AdAware (free downloads).
3. Avoid all porn sites (sorry).
4. Get a current antivirus program, run it regularly, and keep it updated.
Let us know if you have any continuing problems.
Ad-Aware - www.lavasoftusa.comSpybot - http://security.kolla.de