Minor Problem with Yahoo Messenger

[MTB{SOLO}]

A freind of mine is having a small problem with Yahoo Messenger and has asked me to help fix it. Only thing is Im not really sure how. Ive tried several web searches for fixing the problem but get too many results on too many difft problems. Ive also tried running Adaware and a few difft antiviruses to see if those would work with not success. Ive also tried uninstalling and reinstalling YM on her pc......again no good.

The problem started when she accidentally clicked an add on a popup. Since then parts of her YM seem to have been overtaken by a popup add for sextracker.com :o. For instance whenever she tries to view a friends Profile, several adds for some sextracker.com thing pop up instead and prompt a download of their software.

Im not so computer savvy, so I dont now how to go about locating whatever program or bug she downloaded to eliminate it. If anyone here has ever come accross this annoying problem or knows of some way I can fix the problem please respond :help:

**note** My apologies to admins if this isnt an appropriate post for the animesuki forums. Im just not familiar with any other boards and know there are lotsa knowledgable peoples here.

[Shii]

Sounds like she has got spyware, but just that AdAware did not detect it. To delete the spyware, try Spybot Search and Destroy (http://www.safer-networking.org/index.php?lang=en&page=download), which might find something that AdAware didn't. By the way, out of interest for your computer's health, don't use Internet Explorer (http://ashitaka-san.home.comcast.net/yayrant/ieharmful.html) ;)

[Superchop]

In my opinion Ad-aware is better then spybot search and destroy....it always finds more then spybot...and is updated more frequently....

but it does sound like spyware...or maybe even a virus....

btw...the homepage doesnt change does it?

[MTB{SOLO}]

Ahhh thanks for the quick responses guys. Ill definately have her give Spybot Search & Destroy a try, ashibaka.

Superchop, no adaware didnt fix the problem nor did the difft antiviruses I ran......and her homepage was yahoo and still is, so that wasnt affected.

Another side affect was that a file for her soundcard driver seemed to have been wiped out rendering it useless, but I was able to recover that file from the soundcards software cd......no real harm done.

[outlaw55]

Did you bother to run the online update on ad-aware before running, it accually finds a LOT more with that updated. It doesn't sound like a virus being it is popups.

I've worked on computers were adware STOPED the ablity for that PC to browse the net and ad-aware update in the software didn't work. After scanning and fixing the bug for browsing and downloading the updates manually and it ended up finding over 100 new instances of adware on that PC. If you didn't update the definitions (or whatever lavasoft calls it) then i HIGHLY recommend doing that and trying to scan with ad-aware again.

[MTB{SOLO}]

outlaw55, no I hadnt run the update for adaware. I just realized that last night while I was running adaware on my own pc.......but until I get the chance to try it out on her pc, I wont know what will work ;) hopefully itll do the trick.