how to remove porn pop ups

[Wah]

my friend said he gets porn pop ups every once in a while while surfing the web. He said he's sure they are not coming from the websites... he thinks its something on his computer. He tried adaware, but it doesn't detect anything. One other thing, if he leaves his computer on and comes back a while later, he gets a bunch of these "empty" boxes on his start bar (when he clicks them they go away).

Any ideas??

 

[jfall]

Download Lavasoft Ad-Aware

 

[Wah]

like i said... adaware isn't solving the problem. Any other programs?

 

[olds]

I know someone who downloaded something he shouldn't have and experienced a simular problem. Have him look in Add/Remove Programs to see if there is a program there he doesn't recognize. I, I mean he found one there, uninstalled it and then ran Adaware. I don't recall the name of the program but I think it was 3 letters and ended in .com

 

[jfall]

Sorry, didn't see the part about ad-aware. Have you tried an up-to-date virus scanner? First glance I would expect it to be spyware causing the problem.. if not, then I would say it could be a worm/virus or possibly 3rd party software

 

[EagleKeeper]

Shut down the internet connection or tighten up the firewall and observe what programs complain.

 

[Jeff7]

It could be tough. I've encountered some that are quite nasty - self replicating EXE's and shortcuts, etc. Some places to check:
Win.ini
System.ini
Startup folder
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run, Runonce....a few other Runs there
Maybe in Autoexec.bat too

Ooh, another idea - use MSconfig to check your startup stuff.
Also, if you're using Win9x, get Resman at the bottom of the page; if Win2k/XP, use Ctrl+Alt+Del to check the running processes. Look for any unusual EXE's. You will need to terminate these processes (or probably just a single process), if you want to delete the files.