My Computer's Gone Berserk!

dieselsmoke1 · Oct 14, 2003

Re: My Computer\'s Gone Berserk!

One additional note regarding SpyBot. AdAware does a fine job of removing spyware AFTER IT'S THERE.

Spybot gives you the option to be proactive and permanently immunize IE against many known offenders, thus preventing them from ever occuring and "phoning home" before they are detected.

AdAware Plus does something similar, however it is not free.

dieselsmoke1 · Oct 14, 2003

Re: My Computer\'s Gone Berserk!

Here's an interesting bit of related trivia...

My email address dieselsmoke@cox.net has been used but for one purpose, this board. Created new when I registered and never given out other than here. I log in and check it about once a week, sure enough, spam. How'd that happen??

2 obvious choices. Either a roaming spybot stumbled across my address in this forum, or a spyware program called moma to report the new email address' existance before I switch to SpyBot S&D.

I'm not implying TBN sells our email addresses. The spam has nothing to do with tractors, just crap.

BigIron · Oct 14, 2003

Re: My Computer\'s Gone Berserk!

( Bird,
Do you use a pop-up stopper? I do and it seems to help somewhat.
Here's a free one. Oh Panicware that someone already mentioned /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
Panic Ware

Jerry )

On the serious side, Netscape now has a built in pop-up stopper. I get zero pop-ups while using that browser, and, as always, it is free. One of the many reasons I started using Linux: there is a world of good *free* software out there in the open source world!

Paul

Bird · Oct 14, 2003

Re: My Computer\'s Gone Berserk!

( Do you use a pop-up stopper? )

I haven't been using one, and the number of pop-ups I've gotten has never been a serious problem until Saturday. And after running Ad-aware, about an hour ago I got a whole flurry of pop-ups while trying to read some other posts on TBN. I was closing them as fast as I could, and when I finally got them all shut down, I ran Ad-aware again and it came up with 68 more bugs. /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

I had to get off the Internet and do some other things, so I guess tomorrow I'll try the panicware.

dieselsmoke1 · Oct 14, 2003

Re: My Computer\'s Gone Berserk!

Here's a good article on spam and related stuff if you're interested.

r0GuE · Oct 14, 2003

Re: My Computer\'s Gone Berserk!

Google Toolbar w/ Integrated Pop Up stopper!

I use this and love it!
Free is a good thing too!
/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Dozernut · Oct 14, 2003

Re: My Computer\'s Gone Berserk!

Bird
Didn't you say you had Norton Anti-virus. I have the 2003 version that has an excellent popup program. I do not have popups! It might depend on what version you have, but click on the Norton desk top symbol and check your menu and see if you have it and if it is activated.

Durbob · Oct 15, 2003

Re: My Computer\'s Gone Berserk!

Go to www.crazybrowser.com and download it . It has a built in pop up stopper and works off internet explorer , so it looks like your ie browser. It has tabs on top where you can open multible pages at once and it's free. Once you use it you wont go back to anything else. /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif

ronjhall · Oct 15, 2003

Re: My Computer\'s Gone Berserk!

Bird
I don’t know if this will help your problem. My notebook has been getting a lot of pop-ups. I was looking for a way to stop them.
I was listening to a computer help program in Toronto a couple of weeks ago. The person running the show recommended a pop-up stopper from Google.
I am always leery of any kind of software offered by a search engine. My experience with Yahoo was bad enough to make me switch ISP’s. /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif
I installed the Google Tool bar about 1 1/2 weeks ago on both my notebook and desktop computers. I turned off the options that I did not want to use. My note book has over 50 pop-ups blocked. Desktop shows 6. /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif

You may want to try it when you get your current problems solved. Google Toolbar

Bird · Oct 15, 2003

Re: My Computer\'s Gone Berserk!

Well, I logged on this morning, got quite a number of pop-ups, including some kind of download that tried to install "Lycos side search". So I ran the Ad-aware again, downloaded and installed the Panic Ware, ran Norton SystemWorks again and it supposedly "fixed" some registry errors, and now I'm trying again. The Panic Ware has an audible beep when it blocks a pop-up, so it did a lot of beeping when I logged on, checked weather forecasts, read the local newspaper, etc. and now it hasn't beeped for several minutes.

I guess I'll give this a day or two to see how it goes. I still wonder what caused the sudden dramatic increase in the number of pop-ups, how it can download and install software that I didn't want, in spite of the firewall being enabled, etc. And I have Norton SystemWorks 2002 instead of 2003 and I don't find any mention of pop-ups in it.

I appreciate everyone's help, and if this doesn't work, well . . ., I'll keep track of this thread and try some of the other suggestions. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif