MSinfo32.exe comes with windows and will tell you everything that is running. It is good to run it once in a while and see what’s running. You should know the prupose of every single thing running.
Most programs and peripherals install a lot of unneeded crap which you can disable.
??
Well, a thread brought to life.
Just to finish up (? - you guys can keep talking about this if you like, but I’m done)
I removed over 3,600 infected files from my computer, and now the problem is solved. I have no idea if the particular virus I had caused the problems, but getting rid of it seemed to solve it. So thanks for all the input. :)
I’m just bumping this to again thank Joey G and all others who helped in this thread. The other day I downloaded something from the Underdogs site and I should have known something was hanky when I had to disable Zonealarm in order to get the file. Well Xupider(sp?) and some smarmy “scratch off” game (and others)inflicted themselves on my system and I began experienceing many of the same problems that alice_in_wonderland described. I did a search and found this and other related threads and followed the advice, includeing downloading the greatly helpfull SpyBot program mentioned first by tomndebb. Now my system is clean and the barrage of popups has ceased.
Thanks again to all involved.