I recently got a bunch of help from some people on this Board about a computer problem i was having. As a consequence, i reformatted my hard-drive and reloaded windows and all my other programs.
Everything seemed to be going well, but i now have another couple of problems.
The first is that i’m getting a bunch of annoying pop-ups that seem not to be related to a particular website, but that just appear at random. The subjects of these pop-ups include:
I’ve run Adaware and Spybot, but neither seems to help. Any suggestions?
The other problem is an Internet Explorer problem. Every so often when i’m online, espeically on the SDMB but also on some other sites, i will get an error message saying that IE has caused an error in WINSHOW.dll. Explorer then shuts down, and i often have to restart the computer to get it going again.
I’m running Windows ME and IE 5.5.
Oh, one other small thing. When my computer starts up, it asks me for a password for Microsoft Networking before opening Windows. I just click cancel and Windows opens, but does anyone know how to get rid of this prompt?
This kind of ties into a question that I was going to ask. The question is what anti-spyware software do the people here recommend? However, I’ll probably make a separate post about it in a day or two.
I agree with QED about Windows Messenger. Gibson Research (www.grc.com) also has something to kill it.
If that doesn’t help, it’s probably time to try to eliminate things by hand. First, check your task list. With Windows ME you can press ctrl-alt-del once and see a task list. Look up the items in the task list at a site such as AnswersThatWork. If you can’t find something on the task list here, try Yahoo or Google. Be careful about following some of the search engine links though. They make take you to sites that will further invest your computer.
Say you find something like MSBB.exe on the task list and you then find it at AnswersThatWork. They tell you that MSBB.exe is some sleazy adware. In fact, MSBB.exe is so annoying that there are even Microsoft Knowledge Base articles (Q317714, Q320162, Q299964) for removing it. In that case, follow the removal instructions.
If there are no specific removal instructions, look for it in Control Panel under Add/Remove Programs and try to remove it there. If you have no luck, the Task List should tell you where the application is located. Find it in Windows Explorer and delete it. You will also want to start msconfig.exe (Start->Run->type in msconfig.exe and press enter), go to the Startup tab and remove the check from any line telling this to start.
I was pretty brief with this, but I hope it helps. All I can say is that the companies using these are very annoying.
The only problem, Q.E.D., is that according to the link you provide, Windows Messenger cannot be disabled in ME.
I upgraded to IE6 and the .dll problem seems (fingers crossed!) to have stopped. Thanks for the advice.
As for clicking “OK” instead of “Cancel,” it doesn’t help. But that’s not a big deal anyway.
RogueRacer, i tried downloading grc’s Messenger killer, but it says it only works with 2000, NT, and XP. I looked in my task list an compared the stuff with the AnswersThatWork website, but found nothing out of the ordinary.
Ahh yes… I knew that. Sorry about that. The Windows Messenger thing isn’t for the non-NT based versions (Windows 98, 98se, ME). :smack:
If you can’t figure out what something is in the task list, feel free to post it. Of course, you could just post it to allow use to kill time examining it too.
I also forgot about that last part of your question. Try searching for files with a .pwl extension (in Find, search for *.pwl). Delete these files and reboot. When you reboot, it will ask for a password. Just leave it blank. Hopefully it won’t ask the next time you reboot. There is another step that may be needed, but I’ll need to look at my Win 98 machine to remember where the setting is located. Let us know if it works or not.
Not if it’s WM popups. The Google toolbar only blocks browser popups. If you have a firewall, you can set it to block port 137, and this will kill Windows Messenger popups.
What mhendo said but I’m going to go further and tell you that you NEED a firewall, not ‘if you have a firewall’… If you have a machine connected raw to the net you are just asking for trouble.
Patch your system up entirely using Windows Update.
Install sygate personal firewall (free).
Block everything. Only allow the applications you know need net access to access the internet.
If you don’t at least take these simple steps you will most likely be infected by a worm or worse, a trojan.
I downloaded the sygate firewall, and i also downloaded the google taskbar. I don’t know which one (or both) worked, but my popup problem seems to have gone away.
I do have a question about the firewall. Every so often, while on the internet, i get a warning down the bottom right hand corner of the screen that says:
When i check the log of the blocked things, some are from Verizon (which is my ISP) and some are from other sites. Does anyone know what this warning means, and can i safely ignore it?