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Me thinks me has some spyware on me system. What is the best way to rid myself of said ware?

www.lavasoftusa.com (adaware)
www.safer-networking.org (spybot)

Use them both. They catch what the other misses.

Be sure to use the update feature for both programs as they're releasing updates all the time.

Thanks all. Getting popup ads when I wasn't even on line was getting annoying.

What browser are you using? Mozilla has a pop-up blocker that I use and I never have any problem.

my firewallblocks that stuff; popups, popunders, banners, complete cookie and port control.

There is still a lot of stuff that gets thru tho. I hate the tracking cookies that are attached to a single pixel gif. :\

Sorry to interrupt, but I just downloaded and used both of these programs, nailing quite a lot of spyware in the process. (Thanks a lot for the links; I've been meaning to download both for a long time.) However, I now have a new problem. Whenever I log onto Windows (I'm running XP Home), I get two error messages, one saying that "C:\WINDOWS\System32\services\wmplayer.exe" cannot be found, the other saying that its registry entry does not point anywhere. I know that one of the two programs detected and deleted this as spyware, but I am unsure which one. As far as I know, this is not WMP9, but an older version instead. I re-installed WMP9 with no success. Anyone have any ideas on what to do? Keep in mind that I am a total newbie, and the idea of doing anything with the registry makes me cringe .

Edit: Never mind, I figured out what was wrong. Windows was still running wmplayer.exe in the Startup list, even though it wasn't there. I used msconfig to disable it, and now I don't get the errors. Actually, I had to disable two functions in Startup; after I disabled the actual .exe program, another Startup function appeared, which I believe has to do with the registry. However, canceling both has stopped the error messages.

woodchip wrote:What browser are you using? Mozilla has a pop-up blocker that I use and I never have any problem.

Dedman wrote:Thanks all. Getting popup ads when I wasn't even on line was getting annoying.

Might want to read the whole thread. The ads he got had nothing to do with what browser he used. It got in through some shareware program. When its already on the system, its got nothing to do with your browser other than generating the popup (though the explorer shell).

does the "messenger" NT Service throw pop-ups when offline? might wanna try looking for that too

AceCombat wrote:does the "messenger" NT Service throw pop-ups when offline? might wanna try looking for that too

Ace, you might really want to think about what you just said.....

what, im asking if that service operates while the system is offline. i thought i read something awhile back about someone turned it off and the offline pop ups he/she was getting stopped appearing.

You're REALLY not getting it. Messenger is a simple UDP-based thing that accepts a text message ovr the network and displays it on the screen. Whether it's possible for a machine to send a Messenger message to itself, I don't know. But without something running on your system, it would be impossible to recieve a Messenger Service popup without being connected to a network.

DCrazy wrote:Whether it's possible for a machine to send a Messenger message to itself, I don't know.

Sure it's possible. Open a cmd window and type "net send localhost you suck balls" and see what happens if you have the messenger service running
You're absolutely right on the rest of your post though.

okay how bout this.....instead of giving me a long smartass response, just answer the question with a yes or no. plain and simple. i was ASKING if it was possible for the messenger service to run offline.

A more complete answer:

If the Messenger service is enabled, you can recieve messages from the internet any time your computer is connected to the internet, even if you don't have a browser open. If your computer is not connected to the internet (ie, your modem is not dialed, or your cable / DSL / network is offline) then it's impossible for you to recieve messages from the internet, regardless of what programs are running. But, you can still recieve popups if someone managed to install software (virus / spyware) on your local system that sends you messages through the messenger service.

ROFLBSO

M$SvcCombat©

Frell'n Tool

What, ace doesnt know how to get offline and run a console command?

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

I generally disable the messenger service first thing on any new windows install I do, ever. No use for it, really.

I'm starting to lose credibility in Ace's Masters degree