How do I get rid of these popups that are randomly appearing on my PC? They even appear when I'm not web browsing. I'm using Windows 2000 and IE 6.
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ANSWERS: 8
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Check your machine for spyware, using a free tool like Ad-Aware. Some popular sotware, such as KaZaa, covertly installs software that sits in the background and throws ads at you periodically. As for when you are surfing, install a popup-blocking tool such as Google Toolbar 2.0 (beta as of this writing), or consider surfing with Mozilla.
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I would add one more suggestion for on-line pop-ups. Try Opera 7 (http://www.opera.com). Opera has had pop-up prevention since version 6 maybe even before. If you don't mind some pop-ups, you can even send the pop-ups to open in the background so your current browsing session is not interrupted.
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After trying Ad-aware, Spybot, and the freeware combo SpywareGuard and SpywareBlaster, I was STILL getting random popups showing up on my machine, even with no web browsers or other applications open. I finally seem to have blocked them entirely by installing Norton's Internet Security application. Thanks, Norton! -
I also saw an answer to this in the Windows XP section (it should be true for Win2k as well). To specifically get rid of those little popups from "Messenger Service", check out this answer: http://www.answerbag.com/a_view.php?id=603 (Btw, this may not be advisable if you are in a corporate environment, because it will also reject messages from your corporate network administrator. Check with your IT department before doing this.) -
I use PopUpStopper from www.panicware.com
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Actually Norton I would steer clear of and would suggest you disable the Windows Messenger service instead and run a good anti-virus, anti-spyware combo.
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Switch to Firefox first thing.
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Possibly a Vundo variant like AB-Joe had. It actually infects an old Java install. You should update Java to the newest version and then DELETE the old installs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vundo_trojan Also, for system protection I run these on client machines who want free apps: AVG Free Anti-virus, AVG Anti-spyware (do a sweep with it), Spybot Search & Destroy (sweep), Lavasoft Ad-Aware (sweep with free version). Normally I would say Windows Defender is worth getting, but you have 2000. Vundo has popped up a lot lately, wouldn't surprise me if you had that.
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