How can I get rid of "xads" browser parasite?

I seem to have gotten some kind of parasite called “xads” that opens a pop-up ad everytime I launch Internet Explorer. I ran Adaware, and it didn’t seem to recognize it; the problem still occurs. I also can’t find any files on my hard drive with the name “xads”. Any suggestions?

Other people that had the same problem were able to fix it with a program called hijackThis!

Maybe it will help you.

Link

Thanks - that software worked like a charm. A strange thing happened, though. It worked so well that I copied the program to a floppy and took it home to use on my computer at home. When I unzipped the file, my McAfee virus scan said it was a virus.

Any comments?