popups without browser being on

[venkman]

My father's computer gets random popups every so often, when the browser isn't on. It's the same thing I've seen with a lot of people who install Kazaa, but he's never installed Kazaa. I assume he installed something else, but I have no idea what it is, and he's running win 98 so I don't have a very user friendly way of viewing the processes. Looking for advice on how to solve the problem. Several questions/ideas I have are :

1. Is there a way to see what software is automatically loaded at startup? I know some of this exists in the startup folder, but I believe you can also look it up in the registry. I'm wondering where to look in the registry.

2. Is there a way to see what speciffic program is initiating the calls to load the browser?

3. Is there a way to disable Internet explorer from being called from other programs? Like can we set it up so that the only way to open internet explorer is by double clicking it?

4. Will any of the popup blocking software work? What about installing Mozilla? or do these programs only block popups loaded through other html pages (like using the javascript function)?

Thanks,
Venkman

 

[steamwiz]

What o/s is on the computer ?

Are these messenger popups ?

Please Download hijackthis from

http://tomcoyote.org/hjt

Unzip, doubleclick HijackThis.exe, and hit "Scan".

After the scan has finished the "scan" button will turn into a "save log" button

save the log file and paste it here

Do not delete anything yet, as most things hijackthis finds are harmless and needed.

steam

 

[venkman]

Okay, will run HijackThis.exe and let you know the results. The OS is Win 98. To the best of my knowledge, it does not have windows messenger installed on it, but I will double check that also when I get a chance.

Thanks,
Venkman

 

[Marcs41]

For info: Messenger meant by steamwiz is NOT the MSN Messenger but an internal application.
Just so that you know.
Go ahead and check with Hijack as suggested, because you surely have either a spyware, virus or other annoying little application there.
Also, Mozilla will not stop popups if the spyware is already on your PC!
Those popups are usually ADS and even more ads for porn sites.

Marc
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