Pop Ups giving Internet Explorer a virus

[Joe Edwards]

I recently downloaded Smiley Central. Ever since there
are several pop up ads that won't go away. They prevent
me from using Internet Explorer now. I can't even get it
to come up. One of the pop ups was selling a product to
get rid of pop up ads, and they even made my Disk door
open up on my computer. It said it was selling something
to prevent spyware. Now when I try to open Internet
Explorer, the ad is all I see. It also makes my computer
freeze. What should I do? I can't open up Explorer
without seeing that ad and without my computer freezing.
This is bullying people to buy their product and I really
resent it.

The above post appeared in December. I'm sorry but my group access
only lets me respond by cut-and-paste. I can't post on the thread.

This sounds like the atoque pop-up. It is a lot like a virus. It's
generated off a file in the C:\Windows\System folder. The problem is
that each time you start up your browser, the file will copy itself to
a new file name and erase the old one. You have to look for a
recently modified application file in the format XXXXXXXX.exe with the
X's randomly generated alpha-numeric characters. If you're not sure if
it's the right one, make note of the file name, use your browser a few
times and check to see if it's gone and a new one is there. Try
renaming it first to see if it takes care of the problem. If it does,
then erase it.

HTH,
Joe Edwards

 

[Chris]

Sounds like what you have is adware. I would recommend
downloading ad aware 6.0 from download.com. To
accomplish this, you may need to boot your system in safe
mode with network support(Tape F8 as it starts up until
the menu comes up, then select safe mode and hit enter).
Try to use your internet from there. If that fails, use
a friend's pc to get ad aware 6.0 and copy the install
files to disks or a CD.

Bear in mind that you may inadvertantly take out your
internest settings by destroying the adware. The only
way I've found to restore them is to go in under your
network settings and remove everything, then use the
regedit to remove your wsock settings. Windows rebuilds
those settings and will reset any changes made.

If you don't want to do something that drastic, perhaps
you should try restoring IE to the previous installation
(If any).

Hope that helps.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Greetings --

To deal with issues caused by any sort of "adware" and/or
"spyware,"such as Gator, Comet Cursors, Smiley Central, Xupiter,
Bonzai Buddy, or KaZaA, and their remnants, that you've deliberately
(but without understanding the consequences) installed, two products
that are quite effective (at finding and removing this type of
scumware) are Ad-Aware from www.lavasoft.de and SpyBot Search &
Destroy from www.safer-networking.org/. Both have free versions.
It's even possible to use SpyBot Search & Destroy to "immunize" your
system against most future intrusions. I use both and generally
perform manual scans every week or so to clean out cookies, etc.

Additionally, manual removal instructions for the most common
varieties of scumware are available here:

PC Hell Spyware and Adware Removal Help
http://www.pchell.com/support/spyware.shtml


Bruce Chambers
--
Help us help you:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on
having both at once. -- RAH