Hi guys. My sis-in-law's pc has a major pop up ad virus in it. I've updated win xp to have the latest security patches...got windows anti spyware on, I installed ad-aware and AVG. All of these have done their scans and found heaps of problems, but there's still one in there that keeps opening explorer to various ad sites, some of which are just flash anims of advertising.

I'm about to format her drive, but I'd thought I'd ask you guys here for any advice to save me the hassle.

Thanks in advance! :)

tried spybot search and destroy?

nope...will try that one next....

Make sure you do all that crap in safe mode as well.
Also google all your running tasks, and anything in startup in msconfig

last edited by Bah at 16:49:26 14/Oct/05

Try a google search on the popup that you're getting. There's prolly other people out there that have caught it and have found out how to get rid of the thing.

Try Hijack this if the other spyware removers don't work. It's never not killed off a piece of spyware for me.

hijack this > everything else

Heh, just tried "hijack this" add it seems to display the ugly insides of windows boot up files. It doesn't flag what's problematic though, and suggests I show the logs to someone "knowledgable" :)

lol
Google

and suggests I show the logs to someone "knowledgable" :)

No use showing them here then =P

Does AVG give you the name of the virus that's causing the problems? If so, give it a google and someone will probably have an answer for you. If not, maybe try another AV client to see if it can at least find out what the cause is.

I had a client get infected by one at work which the Symantec removers wouldn't get rid of, so I had to use HijackThis with a couple of other progs to get rid of the blasted thing.

last edited by masta_blasta at 14:17:03 15/Oct/05

I use adaware + spybot for search and destroy & spywareblaster for blocking nasty sites in mozilla/IE (no opera).

Just format the drive, back up all her s*** & flatten windows. It's the only way I'd feel safe with something that's a prick to get rid of.

formatting is a little forward in my opinion, though if windows is playing up on top of the spyware I'd give it a format. Otherwise Hijack this.

Thanks guys, I think Spybot did the job. It found heaps of stuff and the pop ups have stopped. Hard to believe that Microsoft Antispyware, AdAware, AVG and Spybot all found different things, and were all needed to finally flush this thing out...these hacker guys have way too time on their hands! :)

Thanks to everyone for their help.

Cheers!