possible virus ????

[TLee38]

I haven't been online much since surgery , but the wife and kids have taken it over. For the last couple weeks we've been getting popup ads while surfing between sites or even while being on a site such as this one an ad will take over the page and the only way out is to go back 4-5 pages or close it and restart. I had the free version of avg and when this happened I upgraded to the pay version of internet security with identity protection. Now I have virus/ad notices on just about every page and still have the pages being taken over by ads. I've run the virus scans and it shows clear. Any help ? Tony

[DaleM]

Sometimes I think these internet security programs are a bit too aggressive, much like Vista and Windows 7 prompting you every time you install some software. Just about every web site nowdays has tracking cookies or ad code. There are addons to Firefox that blocks ads. Problem is sometimes these aren't ads at all and you tend to miss a lot of content when visiting typically legit sites.

Two free pieces of software I'd get. One is Malwarebytes, http://www.malwarebytes.org/, and the second is Ccleaner, http://www.ccleaner.com/. Malwarebytes is pretty good at sniffing out these things and Ccleaner deletes most of your Internet temp files, recycle bin, cookies, etc. although you can specify which cookies you wish to keep. IE and Firefox both don't do a very good job of deleting their respective browser's temp files or cookies.

Another program I bought is from UniBlue called Registry Booster, http://www.liutilities.com/products/registrybooster/. Running this cleans up your registry of some virus pgms along with invalid links etc. It's on sale now for $30 at their site. I run it about once a week. PCtools has one called Registry Mechanic, http://www.pctools.com/registry-mechanic/, that does about the same thing. It is $30 as well.

There are some really nasty viruses out there that embeds itself and keeps poping up telling you that you have a virus and it wants to do a scan and/or prompts you to a page to buy their software. It's a scam and the code embeds itself so you can't run a typical antivirus program, Malwarebytes, or just about any executable file. Blocks IE, Firefox, Safari and probably other browsers from going anywhere except their site. It changes the running file's name so even if you delete it once, it regenerates with a new name. Really tough to get rid of. I've gotten it on my PC once and I've cleaned it from a couple of others; generally took 3-4 hours to hunt it all down and had to use another PC to find solutions on the internet.

[Six Actual]

I use this and downloaded it from MS. It's free and protects against viruses, malware and spyware.

Microsoft Security Essentials

http://www.microsoft.com/Security_essentials/