relief

The computer needed some serious attention; I had been running Spybot every day, but it was almost totally ineffectual. So many windows were popping up that the computer would just lock up and cease all functioning. Ctr+Alt+Del wasn't working at all.

So, I spent a hour or so with the computer in safe mode, going through the hard drive myself and deleting everything suspicious.

The pop-ups, which were mostly from IE, have stopped. This is partly because some program or another added a ton of sites I would never go to onto my "Pop-Up Allowed" list. I'm still having trouble with sites loading at random while I'm in Firefox though. Like, I'll be reading an article and BAM some retail-discount-penis enlargement-drug rehabilitaion-coupon site will pop up. I've got another Spyware program now, and I'm hoping that will get rid of anything I missed when I went through myself.