Every minute of every hour of everday(OK I exaggerate but only slightly...) I am getting ad after ad after ad...The most common one, or the one I get 9 out of 10 times, is the Stop Pop Ups Forever. The one with the stop sign.
I have the pop up stopper free edition from panicware. But it doesn't eliminate pop ups altogether. I'd say it only stops maybe 60%.

I don't have anything related to hotbar and I cannot figure out what is causing all the excess ads. Any ideas??

Anyone know of a program that `causes this? It's this specific ad that gets me because if I didn't have that one, I would have hardly any pop ups at all. Could it have been something I downloaded?

Thanks
Heather

Heather, JUST today, I installed a google pop up blocker. I've never had any work better. So far, it's blocked 58 popups that would have driven me nuts!

Here's the link, give it a try.

(gives you a google tool bar, but it's totally cool too )

http://toolbar.google.com/

Heather, there are hundreds of "malware" programs which can display ads on your computer. Use Lavasoft's free Ad-aware 6 Standard Edition to identify and remove these pests.

Heather,
You might also try POW, I've been using it for awhile, and it does great! You just start it with Windows, or start it yourself when you fire up the computer and are ready to go online. While its running, if a pop-up "pops up", you just left click once on its icon near your clock, and click the "add/delete popup" option, then double click the popup thats open on your desktop in the list of open windows in the POW screen. After that, whenever that popup tries to open again, POW will automatically close it! Thats the part I like the most! LOL Here's the link to download it:

Click here

Now you have a few options to explore, . Good luck!

chris

Thanks all, for your help

I will deffinatly look into those

I tried Toms suggestion, Ad-aware 6. It worked wonders. I downloaded the program and it found several bad things. Hotbar, was one of them.

Upon getting rid of those problem prgrams, the awful ads almost completly stopped! I no longer get any of those pesky "Stop pop ups forever!" ads.

I forgot to turn my ad blocker back on last night before I went to bed. I was very surprised when I checked my computer 12 hours later, that I had onlt gotten 1 ad!!! I'm sorry, but it reaaly made me happy. usually, if I left my ad blocker off for more than 5 minutes, I got 10-20 ads.

Thank You very very much!!

-Heather

I had a free download called 'screen calipers' that I downloaded and used for a month before it began to spawn pop up after popup, gator style. Be sure that when you download something 'free' that you read fully the license agreement (there is ALWAYS one) it will usually say that by downloading our free junk you are accepting our advertisers crap. It took me hours to isolate where the pops were coming from. Go into your program files and see how many new programs it has added. The calipers thing loaded about 6 new similar pop generator programs on my system before it actually began popping things. This is an extremely deceptive method for ad revenue generation, and IF I AM EVER RICH ENOUGH, I am going to go after this type of software implementers WITH a vengence. I hate this, inexperienced people all over the world are sitting in front of crippled PC's that pop something every time they touch a key. Makes me want to open up a King(Krimson)-sized can of whoop-ass on these guys!

Best value Program for stopping This Deluge of Poop in assorted guises and names is Spywareblaster from http://www.wilders.org/downloads.htm
Download link is halfway down the page
There is more info on this program on Answerpool run a search for my screen name and type spywareblaster as a search keyword

The current Number of Items my machine is protected against is 952 (added about 80 New items in the last update Just 2 days ago )
I can run around Popup generator loader sites safely. Knowing that this program is watching my back against Spyware/Trojans... Otherwise I'm up to my neck in Popup generators and having to change my Homepage daily
My score on this program 10/10

And you'll be glad to learn that KK's New Advertiser is not featured on the Spywareblaster list

[This message was edited by bedstor on 12-02-03 at 09:13 PM.]

Thanks bedstor for pointing that out. I had over twenty conversations with Adtegrity and Intellitext before their tags were added to our site.

Sometimes when I am looking over the financial books, I think I should go with one of the high paying pop generator programs but, I keep remembering what I hate when I am surfing. I hate wading through a sea of pesky popups. I hate that these guys try to make it look like your system is generating them. No one should be able to do any 'covert' advertising. Toolbar downloads are about the same thing. You get the suppliers advertising affiliates instead of those of the sites you go to when you have one of these on your system. I have considered these as an addition but I keep thinking that if I just stay the course things will pick up for the site.

It is through the charity of our members using the Amazon payboxes and my own day job that I have been able to stave off this as an inclusion on our site. I hope to always be able to keep pops off the site. They suck, but not as much as the idea of AP terminally suffering from lack of funding.

I must say though in all fairness, it is damned hard to make any money at all on the internet from my experience even if you have an excellent product like AnswerPool.com to offer. Almost no one will pay for something they can get free, even if they realize it could cause a good site to close.

Someone posted a thread recently about a good needle-point/crafts site that went bust.

The more popular your site is, the more it costs to operate and revenue must be generated in some way. It is a shame that apathy leads to this loss for everyone. So I do understand WHY companies use pops.

I walk a pretty fine line for a big fat guy..

This is the only thing I found that really works. To bad it aint free anymore.

http://www.kolumbus.fi/eero.muhonen/FS/