OT:Popups are nailing me

If you're a REGEDIT guy and you prowl around your registry from time to time, you will find some amazing things get in there. If you're not, you can pick up some effective utilities that will get that crap out, along with the data-mining cookies and files. Unfortunately, it requires some effort these days. And, even with the utilities, I still have to go into the registry from time to time to change my search engine default, for example, back to what it's supposed to be.

I use this combination: Ad-aware; AbsoluteShield; and Regvac. Together, they do a fine job. I registered my copy of Regvac. I use the freeware versions of the other two. You can search on those names in Google and you'll find sites from which you can download them.

I use AbsoluteShield every day. It's very quick. I use Ad-aware every few days. It's not as quick (AbsoluteShield is a good "pre-cleaner" for Ad-aware. Wiping out all cookies with AbsoluteShield, a very quick operation, solves a lot of the problems.) I use Regvac once a week or so. It's also not quick.

Oh, and I've found that MailWasher is a handy tool for keeping junk and viruses out of your email.

Good luck.

Ed Huntress

Karl Townsend scribed in :

you've got spyware and adware loaded. not your fault, they sneak in with other things

download Spybot and remove them all. (I just did this yesterday ona PC here, 14 different bits of trash)

for the future don't load anything without first knowing all about it don't use Outlook for email

swarf, steam and wind

-- David Forsyth -:- the email address is real /"\

\ / ASCII Ribbon campaign against HTML E-Mail > - - - - - - -> X If you receive email saying "Send this to everyone you know," / \ PLEASE pretend you don't know me.

Download Mozilla- it has the best popup stopper going. It's also a zillion times better than Internut Exploder in a lot of other ways.

-Carl (spelled correctly)

"Ed Huntress"

Great advise Ed!!

I just tried Mailwasher and I love it. I am, like everyone else, getting all sorts of crap from everywhere and in the end I was so paranoid that I was simply deleting everything that I could not recognise. (Kind of hard on new business.)

Anyway I think Mailwasher will be perfect for me. (Not complicated)

Bill

Install Popup Stopper, and scrub the system regularly with Adaware. Both are freeware you can download from the net.

Gary

I am assuming you're running Windows 2000 or xp. Here is a link with good info on the "services" that are built into and loaded by windows systems.

I am running Windows 2000 and was getting popups and stuff, after I disabled the Alerter service my popups went away. I started getting some more and I disabled two more services. I have the Alerter, Intersite Messaging, and Messenger services disabled I have not had a single pop-up or intrusive on-screen alert since I did that.

There are a number of sites on the internet that, for a fee, will tell you how to do this. "Stop Pop-ups forever for only $9.95", etc.

On my system it is found at Programs/Administrative Tools/Services. If you do not find Administrative Tools, go to Start/Settings/Taskbar & Start Menu/Advanced Tab and check the Administrative Tools block.

There is tons of interesting stuff in the Administrative Tools, many

2000 and XP user are clueless about the annoyances that can be banished or changed from there.

Here is another great site for dealing with annoying things in windows:

If you want to get away from Internet Explorer and Outlook Express, check out mozilla.org. It is free, will do everything that IE and OE do, arguably as well or better, and make you a slightly lower profile for many viruses. With mozilla installed, you can uninstall Outlook Express. Internet Explorer will always be there (you have to have it for Windows updates) but you do not have to use it. IE is not to be found on my machine as an icon from the desktop, it simply runs itself whenever MS decrees it.

Must the the Mars Influence. .......

Gunner

"The people who believe that, as a result of industrial development, life is about to become a hell, or may be one already, are guilty, at least, of sloppy pronouncements. On page 8 of Earth in the Balance, Al Gore claims that his study of the arms race gave him "a deeper appreciation for the most horrifying fact in all our lives: civilization is now capable of destroying itself."

In the first place, the most horrifying fact in many of our lives is that our ex-spouse has gotten ahold of our ATM card. And civilization has always been able to destroy itself. The Greeks of ancient Athens, who had a civilization remarkable for lack of technological progress during its period of greatest knowledge and power, managed to destroy themselves just fine." -- P.J. O'Rourke, All the trouble in the world. The lighter side of famine, pestilence, destruction and death.

This is a valid solution to the problem, but it really is a scorched-earth type of response. There are a lot of very legitimate sites that I visit every day that use javascript in a benign way. Typically these uses include making some content dynamic without requiring another round trip to the server, form validation, etc. Turning off javascript really should be the last option. Java, however, may be the spawn of the Devil himself (grin).

Clemmens If you are using Internet Exploder you can add sites by url to the trusted sites list and allow sites in the trusted sites list to use java script etcetera. You just have different settings for trusted sites verses "internet". Oh yes to add sights not using ssl, that is those whos url does not begin https://.... you must uncheck the require server vierification check box in the trusted sites list. On the other hand my trusted sites list consists entirely of bozos I have no option but to buisiness with. I find it extremely offensive that they require 1 or more virus transmission or espionage technologies to be enabled to use there sights. Alan Wood

But you will also find that the sites that use it in a benign way also are acommodating enough to realize that not everyone permits javascript to run, and have versions of their sites that account for that, that work equally well.

Indeed I would say that the *best* commercial sites I've seen do NOT use javascript for anything. It's simply not needed.

Jim

================================================== please reply to: JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com ==================================================

Google offers a toolbar that is quite useful, and it has a popup killer feature that seems to work well.

Ron Thompson On the Beautiful Mississippi Gulf Coast USA

Where did everyone go? Oh, yeah. Y'all come, ya hear?

*******

Jim, probably a matter of irrestible force/immovable object, as those who are opposed to Javascript are pretty steadfast in their beliefs, but there are some things that either cannot be done without using Javascript, or are very inconvenient to do otherwise, including:

• Form validation - yes, it can be done server-side, but it is easier to make one round-trip to the server with the correct information than it is to make (possibly) multiple round-trips to the server to get things right. * For commercial sites (those selling stuff through a shopping cart), the last thing you want to do is to send the customer off of the shortest path to the checkout (where they actually pay). As a result, it may be good business to create a pop-up that answers a specific question rather than send them to a page off the beaten path, and require them to take some action to get back on the path. * For those sites that adjust their layout to match the customer's screen width, there is simply no other way to gather and act upon the screen width data. * Dynamic calculations, for instance to update the total of a shopping basket when a customer changes the quantity.

All of that said, I will generally not visit sites that make extensive use of pop-ups that I don't request. As an aside, I've found that the Mozilla browser, which I just downloaded a couple of days ago, has what appear to be very effective pop-up stoppers, on top of a suprising degree of usability. In addition, there are very stupid uses of javascript, such as one metals-related site that requires javascript (rather than simple forms) to be on in order to proceed through their checkout process.