Install the Google toolbar and it's popup blocker http://toolbar.google.com Check your registry settings for Intenet Explorer too. You can have the symptoms you describe both without the particular web pages you visit having popups coded in them (wouldn't think there are any popups on ET pages) AND without having an actual adware program running on your PC. There are registry settings that can instruct IE to route all your searches through a particular place before going to your normal search engine and that can direct it to route all your web destinations to a particular address first (with your destination sent as a parameter). It's designed to allow organizations to control/track traffic generated by employees/members, but if you downloaded and ran some bit of code buried in something you thought was legit it could have changed these registry settings. If that happens, then all your searches can be routed through one of the many sites that try to secretly track your search preferences and then sell that info (unlike Google, Yahoo, etc. these guys tag your searches to you through a unique ID). All of your web page access requests can also be routed through one of the many outfits that track this info (and sell it) - and again, all your accesses get recorded against the unique ID they've assigned you. You won't normally see any of this happen because the websites in the middle of these spy-a-thons immediately reroute you to where you thought you were going. Look in the various registry keys under both: HKEY_Current_User\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer and HKEY_Local_Machine\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer for suspicious entries/settings such as in the Search subhive, in the Main subhive (any search or default settings. Don't remember the exact settings that I've seen, but I've seen lots of this on the PC of the son of one of my friends - he's forever downloading and running some piece of shit program or gadget that then infects his machine. I finally told him/them that if he's going to treat his PC like a toilet and throw any old shit into it, he'd better learn to use a plunger - don't call me anymore.
-zone alarm (firewall in-out traffic) -ad-aware -firefox -disable cookies from any site except for the trusted ones (elite is one allowed in my tiny list) -change your email prog. or at least disable the preview window in outlook. I can guarantee you'll avoid 99% of security issues plus this stuff is for free
Been a member here for over a year and this slug is only the 3rd person on my ignore list. Mr Market for just plain lying about 55 wins in a row or whatever. Shogun trader from bestdaytrader for taking advantage of lotto minded individuals. And now longshot for being longshot. The day you get a rise out of me is the day you don't need viagra anymore to aid your perpetual whiskey dick...bye bye.
Sounds like you have been infected with the coolsearch CWS Trojan. Removing this pestilence from one's system should solve your problems and speed up your system as well. The key to removing this is the registry key called HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows\AppInit_DLLs You have to remove this key. The value of this key may look blank, but it isn't. They hide the value so you can't see it. This registry key tells Windows to load the trojan DLL every time ANY application is run giving it complete control to do whatever it wants. So you need to remove it so that the trojan DLL cannot load and keep re-infecting your pc. The way to remove the registry key is not obvious. If you just delete it from regedit, since the trojan DLL is loaded, it will re-add it right back. (Try it. Delete the AppInit_DLLs registry key and hit F5. Notice that it's added right back by the trojan). So what you have to do is the following which worked for me. 1. Rename the HLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows folder to Windows2. 2. Now delete the AppInit_DLLs key under the Windows2 folder. 3. Hit F5 and notice that AppInit_DLLs doesn't come back. 4. Rename the Windows2 folder back to Windows. Now that AppInit_DLLs is gone, run the latest Adaware/Spybot/whatever to remove the trojan for good. Reboot your machine. Your computer should be free of this for good now. Run this cws shredder when your done as well and do a google search for spywareblaster to prevent this in the future! http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html