my friend has Windows ME 2000 installed on his computer.
He is bothered by popups constantly which causes his PC to freeze, sometimes while he's typing etc.

The only way out of it is to shut down and start again.

Any help as to how best I can explain the way around this would be greatly appreciated.

More than likely, adware or spyware (or other "malware") programs have been installed on the system, probably without the owner's knowledge. Use Lavasoft's free Ad-aware Standard Edition to identify and remove these pests.

Before starting a scan, use Ad-aware's update function to obtain the most recent support files.

thank you very much for replying, sounds good to me, so I'll give this a try.

Appreciated.