IE Popup Problem

A lot of the time I'm online, I'll just be sitting here listening to music or surfing around. When I'm not doing those, though, I'm goofing off in Animation Shop 3 or PSP8. I'll be typing something (most of the time) and I'll get a "Server is Busy" box, the X is greyed out, the Cancel is greyed out, and I can pick from Switch To or Retry. If I hit Switch To, the Start menu pops up. If I hit retry, the devilish little box just pops back up. Sometimes I'll sit here a whole minute, leave it alone, and then click Retry. It comes back and back and back until the popup window is ready to come out of hiding. What can I do?? I've run Spybot, Ad-Aware, Spy Sweeper...I'm out of ideas...

And paitence!

Help, please!

--From an obviously computer illiterate girl...

[EDIT] I forgot to mention that I'm on AOL when online. I use the AOL browser, only IE when I'm looking at Sims 2 stuff... [\EDIT]

What is this "popup window is ready to come out of hiding" thing ?

And this "Server is Busy" happens when your online ? or is something trying to connect ?

Read EggHead's SPYWARE Removal thread , it may be helpful.

To FastGame:

Heh. That means that the window is trying to come up and load the spam popup. And yes, it only happens when I'm online, and only on this XP user.

To cash_site:

I have, that's what I've tried to do, but it didn't help...

Oh ok... hmm... Try a virus scan too, also an online virus scan would be good too...

Barring all that, does AOL have an updated Browser or client apps? I heard there were a couple of vulnerabilities with AOL recently...

Also, do you have an up-to-date firewall, is it enabled?

Another thing you might be able to look into, is the google toolbar or similar, that have a built-in pop-up blocker... it should be compatible with AOL and hopefully it works when the browser is closed...

You might also want to try running Microsoft's Anti-Spyware tool.

So far this has been one of the more comprehensive spyware tools that I have used.

You might also want to look through the installed programs had remove anything that might have been bundled with spyware/adware programs, such as p2p apps, warez, etc if you are into that type of thing.

Quote:

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...be typing something (most of the time) and I'll get a "Server is Busy" box, the X is greyed out, the Cancel is greyed out, and I can pick from Switch To or Retry. If I hit Switch To, the Start menu pops up. If I hit retry, the devilish little box just pops back up. Sometimes I'll sit here a whole minute, leave it alone, and then click Retry. It comes back and back and back...

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same thing happened to me last night when i was in nikon editor attempting to edit the props of a pic. i wasn't online. finally got tired of waiting for some resolution so i opened up task mgr and was looking at the processes runnning, when whatever had a lock on the job released and the 'switch to or retry' screen fell off the screen and released the lock on the pic. no time last night to run a virus or spyware scanner, i'll do that tonight when i get back from work. ~s

Failure does not mean I'm a failure; It does mean I have not yet succeeded.
Failure does not mean I don't have it; It does mean I have to do something in a different way.
Failure does not mean that I will never make it; It does mean that I need more patience.
- Anonymous

Try using another explorer, from my own experience mozilla firefox is much less vulnerable then IE to that king of things.

you may also consider switching to firefox.