How do I Permanently KILL these Damn Popups? (Windows XP)

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1

I’m running Windows XP and I really like it, for its stability, fast loading and generally good performance.

But I am getting literally hundreds of God-Damned popups Instant Messenger ads every day. (Sickengly, 90% of the freaking popups are ads for sites to disable Instant Messenger – “Sick of Getting Ads Like This One? Come Pay Me Money at My Crappy Site!”)

I am not very technical so my wimpy efforts to defeat Big Blue have failed miserably. I couldn’t find a control panel for Instant Messenger and I couldnt find anything to delete.

So you tech guys, help me out. Ideally I’d like to castrate, torture, humiliate and brutally execute the assholes who send these ads. But I’ll settle for permenantly disabling the popups, hopefully in a way that doesnt screw up IE or outlook or anything else.

Specs: P4 2.66 with 512 megs RAM - Windows XP, running IE 6.0 and Outlook 6, with the latest Microsoft updates, OEM and properly regiestered. The rest of rig is vanilla: Soundblaster 5.1 GeForce 4 Ti 4200, etc.

Please help me kill these popups.

Dan

2

Instant Messenger Popups? Like MSN or Yahoo or ICQ or AIM?

Or Windows Messenger (ye old NET SEND/WinPopup type)?

Or standard web browser popups?

3

Disable the “messenger” service-- has nothing to do with MSN Messenger.

Right click my computer, click manage, click Services, click Services.

Right click the “messenger” service, stop it, and set the startup type to “manual”.

4

Also consider getting a router/nat box; this kind of questionable network stuff won’t go through those, and it’s a good idea regardless for security.

The 802.11b wired/wireless ones are dirt cheap, ~$50 now. I recommend the d-link DI-614+.

5

Thanks for the help guys. Going into Manage My Computer fixed it permanently (so far).

Ah blessed silence.

Goddamn popups!

Dan

6

But yeah, do what Wumpus says if you’re on broadband. Get a Router/NAT box – I hear they’re $40 right now.

7

Right on Wumpus! Thank you.

Seems like this shit just started all the sudden–I had no idea what the heck was going on.

8

If that kind of trivial “messenger” network traffic is getting through to your machines (any garden variety router stops 99% of incoming traffic), I shudder to think what’s been going on up until now.

Man, you guys REALLY need to get these dirt-cheap wireless/router/switch boxes. At $50 a pop, there’s no valid reason to use a software firewall any more*.

I recommend the D-Link 614+.

  • except for blocking outgoing traffic, but that’s a whole other can of worms. Basically you’re talking about trojans, eg, software someone tricked you into running that dials out to “phone home” via the internet.
9

Wumpus as a non-techie I fear things like routers (what IS a router anyhow - it just looks like a black box to me).

Anyway, I could be convinced to go buy one, if it were easy enough to deal with.

I am running SBC/Yahoo DSL - I just have my single PC hooked up to the DSL modem via network card. I am not running a network or doing anything fancy.

Is a router something I could just plug in and use? Would I need to change anything? Would a router be of any benefit to a vanilla setup like mine?

Thanks,

Dan

PS - How would a router as described compare to a firewall? Which is better?

10

sharpe, for $50ish you could get a router that would fit your needs.

benefits:

automatic firewalling for increased (but not perfect) security
automatic DHCP for instant plug-and-play LAN parties at your house. bring in another computer, plug it in, and it goes…

negatives:

automatic firewalling will make you unable to play some networked games by default, but you should be able to quickly and easily enable the proper TCP ports for those games through a browser-based admin screen on the router.

on the whole, if you have more than one computer sharing a broadband connection, you owe it to yourself to get a router like this.

if there’s just the one computer, the only thing you’re really gaining is firewalling, so you might not really care.

note: other people here know much more about this sort of thing than i do and can probably link you to better explanations. this was just my own experience with routers (i use the linksys befsr41).