Blocking Pop-ups

Often friends and family will call because they are unable to use their computers any longer, and ninety percent of the time the problem is caused by those annoying pop-up advertisements.

One co-workers laptop was so severely infected, he bought a new computer, and gave me the problem computer. When I say infected, this particular laptop was so full of adware, spyware, and malware, that popups were activated when attempting to view the desktop. Programs could not be accessed, and the computer would lockup because hundreds of advertisements would take over the computer, using all the memory.

This was by far the most infected computer I had ever seen, and removing the spyware took some effort on my part.

Here’s how I cleaned the laptop.

1. I booted up in safe mode
2. I deleted all cookies and files in Internet Explorer
3. Installed Spybot Search and Destroy and ran program
4. Installed Ad-Aware and ran program
5. Installed and ran Windows Service Pack Two
6. Went into tools (Internet Explorer), pop-up blocker, and enabled the pop-up blocker


Now the laptop was usable once again, and I returned the laptop to its owner.

Don’t allow spyware to take control of your computer, it will get out of hand.