Pop up help?

[Donkey]

So my girlfriend uses Firefox only for internet browsing, but recently (yesterday), internet explorer popups started exploding all over the place, apparently randomly. Sounds like some sort of malevolent programming snuck in somewhere. My question is what the best way to get rid of would be. Her laptop is kind of old and a junker anyway... what if she just uninstalled IE? That'd be circumventing the problem rather than addressing it, but...

Any ideas?

[Americano]

So my girlfriend uses Firefox only for internet browsing, but recently (yesterday), internet explorer popups started exploding all over the place, apparently randomly. Sounds like some sort of malevolent programming snuck in somewhere. My question is what the best way to get rid of would be. Her laptop is kind of old and a junker anyway... what if she just uninstalled IE? That'd be circumventing the problem rather than addressing it, but...

Any ideas?

Wipe the HD and reload what you want comes to mind.

[Michael]

...what if she just uninstalled IE? That'd be circumventing the problem rather than addressing it, but...
I don't think you can do that without some serious tweaking of the OS. That was one of the core issues of the big anti-trust case that Microsoft lost (but had no penalties - thanks to GWBush and some fat Republican party campaign donations back in 2000).

That being said, someone did successfully remove IE from Windows and proved that it could be done. But this was a software techie type, not an average user.

[drgoodtrips]

I don't think you can remove it as much as hide it. I also don't think you would want to do so - it would have lots of unintended consequences because Microsoft doesn't just give it to you as a browser, but also as a conduit for updates and various other Microsoft minutiae in the OS (i.e. file explorer and internet explorer are basically the same thing). So, you use it even if you don't use it.

Also, the fact that IE popups are occurring is not symptomatic of a problem with IE itself anymore than a piece of malware that launched a video would be the fault of the video player software. In fact, if you did somehow get rid of IE, you'd probably just start seeing those popups in firefox. "Pop-up blocker" works by ignoring certain things that a website owner is trying to send you. If the source of the popups is on your own computer, there's no stopping them - to the browser, this would be the equivalent of ignoring you when you double clicked the browser icon.

I'd throw AVG on there and/or run hijack this. Or, if the laptop is non-essential/shitty, just backup what you need and blow away the OS for a clean install. Or, even better, if she doesn't want to deal with shit like this anymore:

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

[Dominick]

If you're going to use Hijackthis, don't post the results in public. PM them to me or drgoodtrips (if he volunteers such).

[Donkey]

If you're going to use Hijackthis, don't post the results in public. PM them to me or drgoodtrips (if he volunteers such).
What is hijackthis?

[Dominick]

What is hijackthis?
http://www.trendsecure.com/portal/en-US/tools/security_tools/hijackthis
A tool that traces malware activity. As the above link says, do NOT act upon the report it creates unless you know exactly what you're doing. What OS has your gf ?

[Donkey]

http://www.trendsecure.com/portal/en-US/tools/security_tools/hijackthis
A tool that traces malware activity. As the above link says, do NOT act upon the report it creates unless you know exactly what you're doing. What OS has your gf ?
XP. I'll probably download adaware or something and see if that helps at all. HJT seems a little scary big guns, so I'll leave that off unless it seems necessary.

Out of curiosity, why not post the results in public?

[Dominick]

XP. I'll probably download adaware or something and see if that helps at all. HJT seems a little scary big guns, so I'll leave that off unless it seems necessary.

Out of curiosity, why not post the results in public?
Because it reports on ALL running processes. There might be information in it that allows hacking.

[Donkey]

So I hadn't gotten around to doing anything about it yet (I'm actually on her computer right now), but she discovered a new facet: it only really pops up when you use a search engine (on firefox), and the pop-up (on IE) is usually related to the query. I don't know if that makes a difference. I'll probably just download AVG later and see if it finds something. Is Adaware any good?