Win XP "HTML Package" Irritant...

[GlassDaddy90]

I don't know why, but some irritating Internet Explorer window keeps popping up on my screen when I am in the middle of something. It doesn't matter if I'm online, offline, playing a game, whatever....from time to time, it will popup and kill everything I am doing. It is some porn site that is in German, and is trying to download a program to my PC and run it. It is some 1-900 paysite crap that I guess tries to use your phone modem to dial-in 1-900 webpages or something. I dunno, but it is downright annoying!! Is there any way to get rid of this kind of stuff? I have the WinXP Home edition. I can't pinpoint it to any particular file or folder on my hard drive, but then again, I'm not sure exactly where to look. But I do know that it is being stored locally on my PC because it launches itself unsolicited and whether I'm on or off-line. Please help because I am about to pull my hair out! Thanks.

JB

 

[pamf]

try popup ad filter from http://www.meaya.com/. .. ive found it very effective against stopping unwanted popups, and it doesnt seem to interfere with 'good' popups.

 

[TheCorm]

also, look for any suspicious programs that are loading up at startup, heres a handy tool for doing this:

Startup Control Panel @ Download.com

 

[GlassDaddy90]

Ok, I have done what both of you have said. I didn't see any programs loading at start-up, and the pop-up killer app has stopped it from actually displaying on the screen. However, the problem still exists because if I am gaming or something, it will kick me back to the desktop when it tries to come onto the screen, before the pop-up killer app removes it. So, do you guys have any other ideas? Maybe a program that will cleansweep the PC for any abnormal programs altogether? Thanks.

 

[Workin']

There's a free program called Ad Aware that might be able to help you.

 

[altonb1]

1st: Stop surfing the porn sites/warez sites/or porn/warez newsgroups. That's probably where you picked the program up in the first place, you perv! :Q
(Then again, how would I know WHERE you probably picked the program up if I hadn't personally experienced it firsthand?!? )

Seriously, though, turn off the pop-up window blocked program you are currently using to stop it. The next time it launches, check Task manager (right click on your task bar and select task manager) and see if you can identify the program by name. Once you know the name, you should be able to search the registry with regedit to find your culprit. I haven't used XP very much yet, so I don't know if this is pertinent, but check your win.ini or system.ini also and see if you can find the program that is causing the problem there, too. If you delete the program once you identify where it is on your hard drive, you'll have an easier time finding where it was launching from (via the error messages you will begin to see after deleting it)

...and does MSCONFIG exist in XP? That is a nice utility in Win 98 that allows you to see what is loading at Startup and view your autoexec.bat, config.sys, system.ini, etc.

Good luck!