[gorper99]

A friend brought over a dell with windows xp.She goes to college and also has this computer at home.Well,seems that a family member visited some sites and now she has unwanted popups.She wanted me to reformat this for her.I do not believe reformatting will solve the problem.I was considering cleaning off all the temp files,install spybot and adaware,and installing a good popup stopper.Would really appreciate any opinions and ideas on this.

 

[kenneth2k1]

Sounds like it's worth a shot... Install Ad-aware, Spybot and see how much junk they find. Another good thing to get if the problems are bad is CWShredder. Also get the VX2 cleaner plugin for ad-aware off the Lavasoft website.

You can get some useful help about specific browser hijacks and adware/spyware at castlecops.biz

 

[Dust Sailor]

http://forums.techguy.org/t110854.html

Go Here and download SpyBot Search and Destroy and AD-Aware SE UPDATE both and do a scan getting rid of all they find

Do a scan with Housecall and Panda

Download and do a scan with Hijack This 1.99.0 Post the log here Do not Fix anything unless advised from this forum

 

[NotRite²]

Nothing wrong with reformatting and also adding the programs suggested. If she has anything she wants to keep backed up, ground zero is as good of a place to start as any, then adding the necessary protection.

Good Luck!

 

[kenneth2k1]

She wanted me to reformat this for her.I do not believe reformatting will solve the problem.

By the way, reformatting would get rid of the popup problem, along with everything else.

 

[Old Rich]

FWIW . . My rule of thumb: If is spend more than a half hour chasing bugs and spyware, I save the data & settngs and wipe the drive and reinstall . . in the long run I spend less time and the result is much better.

wrs