hi all, I have a user whose machine boots up normally to XP pro, but they are inundated by popups of Web sites that are all very random. the same sites show up sometimes, but along with a bunch of new ones also. they can close them out and they DO NOT show up again until the next reboot. for example, sites the user has never visited such as: www.rite.edu www.stanford.edu www.schlund.com www.above.com saint.ch but one almost consistently occurring one contains "ryan" in it in several variances, such as: ryan1918.com yadayadaryan.com and so on with the ryan theme... I had them search the local drives and the registry for any such references to any part of such sites - all to no avail. anyone have any idea what could be generating these incessant popups on startup? as soon as the desktop shows up, a small dialog appears: "you or a program is trying to access..." and the series of random sites begins, EACH WITH ITS OWN LITTLE POPUP. just out of curiousity, I had him install "popup stopper" and ensure it would start with windows just to see if it would block them, but that didn't work either. there aren't any programs in startup or starting up that are not listed in startup that would instigate such a barrage of dialogs on startup. again, if anyone has an idea of what could cause this problem, I will sure be mighty thankful to ya for the help, and of course, so will this user with the problem machine. take care, and thank you in advance! Chuck

Ryan1918.com brought up a site. I reckon it's adware & you should run updated AdAware, SpyBot S&D and CWShredder after disabling system restore. Then reboot & re-enable system restore. Is your user running SpyWareBlaster or similar prog?? Good luck V...

Thanks Valerie, yes, he is running Spybot S&D with the latest update to it. so when you say "should run updated AdAware, SpyBot S&D and CWShredder", are you being literal with "and" there? I know it may be asking a lot for just one single spyware detection and removal sw to do everything against spyware crap, but I am just curious. I personally run spywareblaster AND spybot on my stuff. let me know, and thanks again! :) Chuck

Check this out" If you really want to get rid of Zestyfnd, CoolWWW, LopDotCom, Zedo, TribalFusion, Cool Web Search, Home OldSP, DOOM VIRUS WARNING popups, and ALL of the other hijackers, spyware, adware, popups, go to http://bubdaddy.blogspot.com/ Read the April 21, 2004 post. I've tried all of the "fixes" everyone in this and many other forums suggested, but nothing worked PERMANENTLY until I bought GhostSurf Pro. The stuff like Cool Web Shredder, Spy Blaster, and all of the others, worked temporarily, but 4-5 hours later, my home page had been hijacked again! I still use Lavasoft's Ad-aware, but have now gotten rid of all of the other defense programs. I can go into the Ghost Surf Privacy Center and see who has placed what on my PC and if I don't want them to have any info about me, I block them. It's that simple...and they remain blocked forever. It enables you to shred your browsing history, and even enables you to surf via anonymous hubs, should you want to do that. You can mask your IP address, and just disappear from the home page hijackers. Even if you visit the occasional "naughty site" you can do so anonymously, and remove all traces of your naughtiness, and more importantly, you cn block all of the crap they will dump on your computer. You can fool around forever with free software (like I did), or you can spend $30.00 and be done with all of the bother. There is a link on the BUBDADDY'S site above which takes you to the publisher of GhostSurf. If you order it from someone other than the publisher, OR, if you find it for less on the internet, you may be purchasing software with malicious code embedded in it. It's been over a week and I haven't seen any Zestyfind, or CoolWWW or any other pests, and I haven't updated anything...GhostSurf does it all for me.

Yes, definitely "and" as well as any other anti- prog you can think of - the more the cleaner. Would you like to guess how long since SpyBot has had an update?? Not knocking them, they have had lots of denial of service probs and after all it is a free prog. I'm sure you know that any anti- prog is only as good as its last update and there has been a lot of activity out there with many providers. Part of diegos post says: "The stuff like Cool Web Shredder, Spy Blaster, and all of the others, worked temporarily, but 4-5 hours later, my home page had been hijacked again!" so I guess an anti-hijack prog didn't work for him. I use SpyWareBlaster and it sure works for me, of course it has to be updated regularly. Good luck V...