Virus? Spyware? Adware?


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Old 06-13-05, 11:57 AM
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Virus? Spyware? Adware?

Hi... I have a computer running Windows 2000.... I am running spybot as well as norton antivirus.... I'll boot up the machine... and poof, all of a sudden a browser window pops up with a "free ipod" or some other God Awful ad pops up... When I run spybot, it says I'm clean... go for updates, there are none.... I know something is on this damn machine, but I can't find it!!! Any ideas? Suggestions.... anuthing????
 
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Old 06-13-05, 06:42 PM
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try this first:
1...Click the Start button, then Settings and finaly control panel.
2...Double click on the Administrative Tools icon
3...Then double click on the Services icon
4...Then in the window that popped up, look in the right column for messenger, right click on it and select properties.
5...In the properties box that popped up, set the service to manual then click the stop button.

reboot.
 
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Old 06-14-05, 10:07 PM
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suggetions? consider switching your browser to Firefox - anything besides Internet Explorer
 
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Old 06-15-05, 10:51 AM
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Seriously, can a browser stop the placing of this crap onto the computer?
 
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Old 06-15-05, 04:04 PM
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Originally Posted by tatespa
Seriously, can a browser stop the placing of this crap onto the computer?
yes

Internet Explorer has not had popup blocking until the latest service pack, and the jury's out on how well it works. all the other major browsers have had it for a while and have had time to tune them; I rarely get popups with Firefox.

IE's heavy interweaving of its code with the Windows OS code make it much more likely that a breach in IE will get through to the OS. The other browsers install as separate applications so the interaction is minimized. If you install another browser make sure you set it as the default. unfortunately, you can't really completely uninstall IE because of the way it is coded with the OS. nor would you want to remove IE entirely as occasionally you run across some idiot who doesn't understand internet standards and codes his site for Windows/IE. One of those "idiots" is Microsoft - they only allow the Windows updates to be downloaded with IE.

give it a shot - you might actually like it.

-art-
 
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Old 06-16-05, 01:13 AM
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I agree, do go with Firefox and use IE as little as possible. For when you encounter sites that can only be viewed with IE, Firefox has a great little extension called IE Viewer whereby you can open the page with IE via right click menu and/or get your downloads (and close it as soon as possible).
 

Last edited by EGreen; 06-16-05 at 01:17 AM. Reason: too trivial to state
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Old 06-16-05, 05:02 AM
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Originally Posted by EGreen
Firefox has a great little extension called IE Viewer whereby you can open the page with IE via right click menu and/or get your downloads (and close it as soon as possible).
Well that's a tip and a half
I might never have to dust off and crank up IE again
Thank you
 
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Old 06-16-05, 07:36 AM
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and there's always the option of giving Netscape 8 a shot - it has the same basic engine as Firefox and is supposed to have IE compatibility built in. I did try this a couple of times in the beta version and it worked fine on a system I know is IE-only. But I've been using Firefox for awhile and it works well for me so I'm in no hurry to switch to Netscape. They're still working out a few little bumps over there so we'll keep an eye on them for now.

-art-
 
 

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