What the hell happened to my computer? Pop ups are out of control!!

[D-Man]

Okay so I was surfing the net the other day and a box comes up asking me if I want to install something. I don't even pay any attention to it and move my cursor to close the window but somehow my finger randomly spasmed and hit the left mouse button right as I moved the cursor over the "Yes" button.

I was all "whoops, what the crap" and hoped it wasn't something bad. Then shortly after Zone Alarm gave me a message stating they had updates and would I like to install them. I did and got errors galore. So I uninstalled Zone Alarm and then just reinstalled the free version from their site.

I get pop ups all the time now, and without clicking on anything! Just typing those two paragraphs got me two more, and annoyingly took unhighlighted this page I'm using to post in ENWorld. Help! If I get up and go watch TV for several minutes then come back I'll have anywhere from 2-10 ads on my screen, filling up my task bar and covering whatever I had up.

I have to do a full internet lock when I leave, which I never had to do before. What could I have installed? Or does the new version of Zone Alarm just absolutely suck!? Help!

 

[nick2]

There's a program called "spybot search & destroy" that finds spyware installed on your computer and lets you delete it. And it's free

 

[2d6]

Spybot - http://download.com.com/3000-8022-10289035.html?tag=lst-0-2
ad-aware - http://download.com.com/3000-2144-10045910.html?part=69274&subj=dlpage&tag=button

download both, update them and run them. they should clean things up. Do you have anti-virus?

 

[Crothian]

Run them and get in the habbit of ruinning them weekly, more if you happen to do a lot of surfing on suspect sites. I had major problems until I got those, and hod my computer friend help out.

 

[RichCsigs]

This is a virus! I have a friend who got hit with this last week. He got it the same way (off of BuffyGuide.com). He said it was a pain in the ass to get rid of.

 

[Andrew D. Gable]

You have been stricken by the Wwwyzzerdd.

 

[2d6]

while your at it, you may want to grab the latest version of the Firebird web browser from http://www.mozilla.org. It has a pop-up blocker buit-in and doesn't have all the active-x issues.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Also make sure it did not add anything to your control panel, guy at work had it and found a search bar add-on, which was a bitch.

 

[D-Man]

Also make sure it did not add anything to your control panel, guy at work had it and found a search bar add-on, which was a bitch.

Yep, I got the search bar too, but Ad-Aware helped me nuke that one. It hasn't come back. But the pop ups are relentless! Neither Ad-Aware 6.0 nor Spybot Search & Destroy have taken out the pop ups.

Spybot always locates one particular file in my Registry that it thinks is spyware but it can't delete it. I ran "regedit" and tried to delete it manually but it always says my attempt failed. Another guy at work got zapped with this thing...what are people doing to get rid of the worm?

 

[Creamsteak]

I havn't caught this one, but (Warning: This program isn't meant to be used lightly, you can seriously screw something up if your not careful with it) in addition to spybot and adaware, I make use of HijackThis. HijackThis might help you remove that particular registry entity successfully.