PositiveWeb

The other day my normally well behaved, if somewhat slow laptop (hard drive needs replacing but that is something for another day) started popping up browser windows of its own accord. Now my browser of choice is Firefox and it's never given me any problems. I checked the pop up blocker was still active and it was and I checked I had the most up to date version of Firefox and I did.

The random pop ups were driving me mad and so I switched to Explorer in the hope that this would allow me to get on with my work with my screen becoming cluttered with window after window but still no luck.

Next step was to run a virus scan - I do this frequently but just in case something had slipped through the net I check my virus definitions were up to date and set Norton running while I attended to the washing up.

It picked up a few tracking cookies but nothing else and still the pop up problem persisted. So off I headed to my trusted friend aka Google. My searches turned up Malwarebytes and after a check to see if anyone had anything bad to say about it I downloaded and backed up my data. As my data was backing up I returned to that washing up that by now needed to be put away. (I can never tell whether working from home is a blessing or a curse - I'd be interested to hear what others think!)

Now I wasn't 100% convinced that this piece of free software was going to work where Norton had failed but hey ho I thought, it's worth a go. And, dear reader it did. Well I hope that's not tempting fate but it detected several things that slipped under Norton's nose and by pop ups have popped off.

Until next time,

Clare Lauwerys
17 Sept 2009

PS I can't stress this too much, back up your data before you do anything.