Pop ups

I have a friend with an abs mayhem g3 notebook a couple of weeks ago he started getting tons of pop ups like 50 - 60 IE windows at once.. they would only load up his homepage nothing else.. when not connected to the net it would just pop up ie page can't be displayed error.. well he decided he wanted to clean it out and reload it anyway so he tried formatting the drive and reloading windows and then got on abs website to d/l drivers... shortly after same pop up problem again.. so I formatted the drive and actually zeroed it just to make sure then reloaded the o/s before the computer was ever connected to the a lan line or any drivers were installed the pop ups came back immediately.. If anyone has any suggestions it would be greatly appreciated!!

Firefox 2.0 PLUS NoScript.

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/722/

He did try firefox before we reloaded it the first time... should we do a fresh install and load firefox right up and see if that helps at all.. I will also try the no script thing and see what happens..

You gonna really reformat. That means wipe the HDD again and let the HDD wipe process complete!

Then reinstall from a CD.

Then make sure that you have a software firewall installed. That's the only way to make sure that it don't come back.

try the tango, it usually works...

Mike

If your friend is running XP pre-SP2, check to make sure the "Messenger" service is disabled... Start | Run |Type services.msc and click OK | Scroll down to "Messenger", right-click and select "Properties" | "General" tab | Under "Startup type", choose 'Disabled' and then choose the 'Stop' button. After the service is stopped, click OK. Nothing in Windows or any real third-party applications should be affected by this.

The Messenger service is used to instant message others on the same LAN (using the "net send" command). It uses ports 135 and 139, and spammers have found a way to use this service to feed you pop-ups. A good firewall (or disabling the service altogether) will stop them, as ports 135 and 139 should NEVER be wide open to the internet.

Good Point... Damn that Message Service...

Mike