I leave my computer on during the day and I'm connected to the internet. I'm running McAfee Firewall and have used Adaware multiple times. Despite these steps, I still come home to a computer filled with pop-ups. Where are they coming from if my registry is clean and I'm not visiting more sites and I'm behind a firewall? What can I do to stop them? Messenger is disabled.

try downloading the goole toobar

download ad aware from http://www.lavasoftusa.com/ and run it...it will remove your spyware...be sure to update it before you run it.

I already said that I've run Adaware and I do have the google toolbar. It's a bit useless though when IE is not even open. Any other ideas?

try spybot also...sometimes it gets some things that ad aware misses...update it first though http://www.safer-networking.org/

I had the same problem, I technically still do. Everytime I got out of IE I got pop-ups so I checked my task manager and low and behold IE was still open. Every single time, never failed to keep running and yet nothing showed on the task bar. Well long explination short... I just ctrl+alt+delete and shut down the IE... that's one solution... another is if you go into control panel somewere there is something that allows websites to expand and stay open so yeah... that's something to look into I don't know exactly what to do on that but um yeah...