Getting annoying pop-ups on parent's PC...

[WhiteEagle]

I am getting really annoyed at my parents' PC. There's a pop-up in the taskbar that keeps nagging up about "supposedly" slower internet speed by 39% (Yeah right!) and that the system performance has slowed down by 47%. It says it's spyware that's doing the "slow-down", yet I've run Lavasoft AdAware twice and got rid of the junk. I originally ran it to try and remove this problem. As you can tell from this post, no dice. It links to sites that I wouldn't trust in a million years. What can I do to fix my parents' PC for them

[Pete]

SpySweeper is a good program that Ive used. I have gotten to a point where I re-formatted a computer because of the annoying pop-ups.

[WhiteEagle]

Looking like it cleaned up after a reboot. Probably needed to do that in order to finish removing that adware/scamware.

[gvblake22]

Go Start >> Run
and type in msconfig
Then go to the Startup tab and uncheck anything that doesn't belong. But make sure you definitely know what you are unchecking! If you aren't sure about something, then just do a Windows file search for the file and see where it is located and what its properties are.

[onebxr]

if you use msconfig, and dont know what it is you are getting rid of try googling the name as it appears. Usually it will tell you if it is ok to delete it.
i.e.
qttask.exe - qttask - Process Information

or you can download ccleaner and it usually does a good job at cleaning this kind of stuff up
-1

[WhiteEagle]

The problem is gone. Must of needed that reboot that I did yesterday to get rid of it. No annoying pop-ups or balloons since I started working on this PC today.

[okron1k]

whenever i have a problem like that i always try to boot into safemode to remove anything... so i don't run into problems of a program being in use.

[okron1k]

Originally Posted by onebxr

if you use msconfig, and dont know what it is you are getting rid of try googling the name as it appears. Usually it will tell you if it is ok to delete it.
i.e.
qttask.exe - qttask - Process Information

or you can download ccleaner and it usually does a good job at cleaning this kind of stuff up
-1

a useful site i've used when i was working tech support for hp:
Sysinfo.org
go through your list and type in each thing that shows up in msconfig. anything empty i usually unchecked as well.

good to hear you got rid of the annoyance.

[WhiteEagle]

Yep, and I get my own PC back any business day now. woot!