Recently, something really odd happened to my DSL Internet connection. My Internet Explorer had been plagued with annoying pop up adds that apparently made resident on my computer; the same pop up adds would appear radomly when I used the Internet, no matter where I went. Finally, I was flooded with them, and I had to restart the computer. When I tried to use the Internet again, it gave me the message: "Action canceled. Internet Explorer was unable to link to the Web page you requested. The page might be temporarily unavailable." I also could not sign onto my AOL Instant Messenger service. I assumed at first this was a DSL connection problem. However, all the cords seemed to be in place, and another computer that's hooked on the same DSL did not having any trouble with their Internet. Here's the strange part: I logged onto AOL with my 56k modem, and STILL couldn't go on the Internet or Instant message people, but could check my mail and go into chat rooms. I have also discovered the programs that rely on a connection to the Internet (i.e. games) do not function. I'm at a lost as to what to do. Did a pop up adds perhaps download something on my computer that would mess with me using my Internet connection?

Download these programs - they are ALL FREE!! They will check for spy/ad/malware on your system and will remove a lot of it for you. 1. Ad-aware www.lavasoftusa.com 2. Spybot Search and destroy www.safer-networking.org/index.php?page=download When you have downloaded them immediately update them and run them. Remove what they find - marked in RED in Spybot for example 4. CWShredder www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html 4th box down in the middle Run this program - click "Fix" - when you have closed/come off the internet 5. Lastly download Spywareblaster and immediately update it. It will not be necessary to manually run this program - it runs in the background and keeps much stuff off your system www.wilderssecurity.com/spywareblaster.html You will need to check for updates regularly - weekly at least. You will only need to run them as and when you feel you have a problem with homepage highjacks or pop ups appearing etc. If you still have problems after running them post back. Good luck!

Check out Response Number 2 of the thread at the link below. http://www.computing.net/windows95/wwwboard/forum/156844.html Tufenuf

When using Spybot check what you are about to remove as when I ran it on my 98 PC and my Dad's XP machine it deleted the Internet Connection settings reporting them as Spyware, so look see if it is trying to delete something like DSO or DSL settings and instruct it to ignore these on future scans. M

Thank you all for answering my distress call. I seriously had no idea what to do. I was able to fix the problem using the program suggested in the other post Tuf linked me too. Thanks. Ray, I will prevent further pop up adds with those programs suggested. I appreciate you telling me about them. M, I wouldn't be surprised if that was the problem, because I did delete a lot of stuff via Ad aware without knowing what I was deleting. Stupid me :P

sabin22, Glad to see that the problem has been corrected and Thanks for posting back to let us know. Tufenuf