Topic awaiting preservation: random pop-up messages?

ok, i've been getting a random flood of pop-ups lately, not just ad windows being spawned from other browser windows but these little windows-loking windows that say things like "want to get rid of these. visit us at blahblahblah.com" as well as other random stuff. ad-aware doesn't seem to have found anything new and i don't see zone alarm giving anything permission that it shouldn't, anyone have ideas/programs/etc. on what i can do to get rid of these? thanks.

chris


KAIROSinteractive

This little tool picks up stuff that Ad-Aware misses..

http://www.safer-networking.org

Have a look at this FAQ:

:FAQ: http://faq.ozoneasylum.com/853

http://spybot.eon.net.au/

I had the same problem a few months ago. I thought I'd disabled messenger, but after following the advice given (^see kuckus link^) I'm free at last.

got it, you guys rock thanks for all the info, i'll go ahead and add the win2000 specific procedure to the faq as well.

chris


KAIROSinteractive

I use spybot, too and it's REALLY helped

I sued spybot once and it royally screwed my computer...it found my legitimate programs and deleted key files in all of them so that they wouldn't run...I really don't recommend it.

if it comes down to it I don't get that many popups, so I just put up with it. All I get is the occasional message accross MSN messenger, and one or two gator ads becuase of the DivX codec I just got which is GAIN enabled.

I never had any problems with SpyBot. When it finds spyware related items, you can select which ones you want to remove. There's also a "Recovery" option that stores all modified items for easy recovery afterwards if some program that uses spyware advertising software fails to start (for example).

Also you might try going you go to Control panel -Administrative tools-services- ...and scroll down to the 'messenger' option on the right hand panel you can choose disable it. It transmits net send and Alerter service messages between clients and servers. This service is not related to Windows Messenger. If this service is stopped, Alerter messages will not be transmitted. If this service is disabled, any services that explicitly depend on it will fail to start. Basically it will block unsolicited messages and pop-ups that find there way in through this hole..



[This message has been edited by Xpirex (edited 08-17-2003).]