Re: newbie running mcafee on windows 2000

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

Uncle Scotty wrote:
I seem to have spyware on my laptop on which mcafee is installed.
Between the time I got the laptop on the internet and the time I
downloaded and installed mcafee, I started getting these annoying
popups, which don't seem to do anything harmful, but they are
incessant, popup like crazy and take forever to close all the ones that
have popped up since the last time I closed them all.

If you are getting popup text message boxes, only when online, and along
the lines of

Message from user FOO on BLAH

spam spam spam spam blah blah
obligatory badly splet missage
bekos spammerz kannt spel

+------+
| OK |
+------+

then it sounds like messenger spam. In these days of WinXP SP2 and
major consumer ISP's blocking inbound SMB packets, I thought that this
was still rare.

You can prevent this by stopping the messenger service (Start, Control
Panel, Administrative Tools, Services), select Messenger, right-click,
Properties, STOP, and set startup type to 'Manual'.

While this will stop messenger alert messages, it is no substitute for a
firewall.

Messenger is a service which is enabled by default on Win2K. It is
unlikely to be of use on a small network (although I do use it in some
circumstances on the company network). As an unnecessary service, it
should be disabled, period.

If, on the other hand you are seeing pop-up full-blown advertising
including graphics, annoying flashing/moving images, etc. You have
almost certainly been hit by some drive-by download. Have a look at
Spybot Search & Destroy from www.kolla.de, and AdAware SE Personal from
www.lavasoft.de
Don't PAY for anti-spyware tools. Many anti-spyware tools that are
advertised and need to be paid for are ineffective, and in come cases,
actually spyware themselves (so called 'Ransomware').

Jim
.

Relevant Pages

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