Popups

[Steve Maskery]

My PC has been nice and stable for yonks, no problems at all. Just this last few days I've started to get annoying popups. One is William Hill Poker and the other SkyPoker. I don't frequent poker sites!

I run Avast! and I've also scanned with Ad-Aware, Sysclean, McAfee Stinger. All report me clean. Does anyone know what could have changed? Something has, I can't get video at woodworkingchanel.com anymore. Well, I can in IE but Firefox crashes "FF has encountered a problem and needs to close."

I've installed and reinstalled both Flash and Firefox but still the problem persists, and I wonder if the two are related in any way, given that they both have started to happen just in the last few days.

I've not installed anything new or visited anywhere dodgy or, as far as I can tell, done anything at all.



Any ideas maties?

 

[Woody Alan]

Steve it may be worth doing a system restore, to a time prior to the difficulties before you get too much further.

Alan

 

[newt]

Steve, I am also having problems with the woodworking channel, very slow and intermittent. I also see that there is a caption saying that the website has exceeded its transfer limit.

 

[Steve Maskery]

Thanks guys.

Yes WW has the error message, but it still plays OK in IE. I'm sure this is just a FF question.

I tried to do a SYstem Restore, and it doesn't seem yo want to play ball. The calendar has no bold dates (implying there are no restore points, and I can't get back to last month to see if there are any there either. Clicking the navigation buttons has no effect. I don't think I've ever had to do a System Restore on this machine. Grrr, I hate computers.

Anyway thank you for you input, much appreciated.

Cheers
Steve

 

[DaveL]

Steve,

Something else to check, do you have the messenger service running?
I had a problem with popups and turning that off solved the problem.

 

[RogerS]

Steve,

Something else to check, do you have the messenger service running?
I had a problem with popups and turning that off solved the problem.

I'd dearly love to know how I can kill messenger from my startup items!

 

[DaveL]

Steve,

Something else to check, do you have the messenger service running?
I had a problem with popups and turning that off solved the problem.

I'd dearly love to know how I can kill messenger from my startup items!

Roger I am not referring to microsoft messenger, there is an underlying messenger service that is used in a network setup to allow system messages to be passed between machines, e.g. the print job has finished on a remote printer or a remote server has a problem that needs sorting out.

Is MS messenger loaded in your system tray when you have just started windows?

 

[RogerS]

Is MS messenger loaded in your system tray when you have just started windows?

Yes it is.

 

[Terry Smart]

If we're talking of Windows Live Messenger (as MSN now seems to be) isn't this the first tick box in tools>options>general?

 

[DaveL]

I am still running the old windows messenger 4.7 and in that it is the first tick box on Tools | Options | Preferences

 

[Adam]

I thought there was some underlying program (probably messenger) which could launch popups - and Microsoft enable it by default that was being hijacked by spam generators to launch pop up windows. In fact it was on here that I was reading it a long long time ago.

Maybe worth a search?

Adam

 

[RogerS]

Terry and DaveL - why..thank you guys. Messenger seems to have gone!!

 

[Steve Maskery]

For anyone with Messenger running, you can disable it (mine already is) in
Control Panel|Administrative Tools|Services.

I've still got this flippin' William Hill thing, one came up just as I started typing this.

Can I block entire domains?

S

 

[Mcluma]

I had the same problems last week (also hill betting agecy), it all started on monday,

I ran spybot and all works fine now

 

[Chris Knight]

Steve,
Have you tried the Firefox extensions Adblock or Adblock Plus? They work well.

 

[Steve Maskery]

Hurrah! At least, I think so.

Mcluma - I ran Spybot and it found a few things that all the others had missed. Claimed to clean them up nicely. Where do these things come from?

The reason I'm happy is that I have my wwchannel video back (although it's the same old films! ) so we'll see.

CHris - I'll look at the adblock stuff, although Avast! is supposed to do that and Firefox has a block switch on it, which is also set.

Thank you one and all.
S

 

[Deejay]

My PC has been nice and stable for yonks, no problems at all. Just this last few days I've started to get annoying popups. One is William Hill Poker and the other SkyPoker. I don't frequent poker sites!

I run Avast! and I've also scanned with Ad-Aware, Sysclean, McAfee Stinger. All report me clean. Does anyone know what could have changed? Something has, I can't get video at woodworkingchanel.com anymore. Well, I can in IE but Firefox crashes "FF has encountered a problem and needs to close."

I've installed and reinstalled both Flash and Firefox but still the problem persists, and I wonder if the two are related in any way, given that they both have started to happen just in the last few days.

I've not installed anything new or visited anywhere dodgy or, as far as I can tell, done anything at all.



Any ideas maties?

Hello Steve

By default, Microsoft seem to leave things vulnerable to attack.

Have a look a the Shields Up site. They have lots of (free) software to improve security. One of them is "Shoot the Messenger" and it does exactly what it says on the tin.

If you run their bits and pieces, you may be surprised what you find left open on your machine.

(Do a system restore first, just in case!)

The link is

http://www.grc.com/stm/shootthemessenger.htm

but it will need enabling by a moderator. (only my second post)

Cheers

Dave Johnson

 

[Steve Maskery]

Thank you for that, Dave. I did sort it out, but it was a persistent little bugger and I had to remove some files by booting into DOS. Everything is now lovely in the garden, but I still don't know how I got it. But I will look at that link when a nice kind mod enables it for you.

Cheers
Steve

 

[CHJ]

(Do a system restore first, just in case!)
The link is

http://www.grc.com/stm/shootthemessenger.htm


Dave Johnson

 

[Gary M]

Steve, or anyone else thats interested
had you by chance downloaded "Messenger Plus! Live" if so you would have downloaded the sponsor which looks to be CiD. you have an option to download without the sponsor, but its cleverly designed that you wouldnt even notice it.
I had a similar problem after I had installed "Messenger Plus! Live", You can remove the sponsor via control panel...add and remove programs. Go to "Messenger plus! Live" and click remove and you will be given the option to remove the sponsor (CiD).
This programe can be a nusiance which turns into a nightmare the longer it is left to run.
HTH.