OT: Need serious computer help

[LionsFan10]

This is probably going to sound stupid, but this is driving me insane, and I can't figure out how to get rid of the problem.

I was surfing earlier tonight, and for no apparent reason, I got bombarded with pop-ups. Mind you, I surf sites like extremetech and Toms Hardware .... so I'm like "WTF" and close them all and re-start, now, every second or third site I go to, even if it's my hotmail account, I get bombed by the SAME pop-ups. I have scanned with Norton AntiVirus 2003, I have used Spybot Search & Destroy, I have even downloaded a $29.99 pop-up blocking program named StopZilla and the pop-ups just keep coming.

I would love to re-format my hard drive and start over, but I'm not that tech savvy and I'm just a lil' afraid of something going wrong for me. Anybody know what might be in my computer, and anyway I can fish it out?

Thanks in advance.

[SackAttack]

Have you tried AdAware? It's a marvelous little program that hunts down any "spyware" that might be resident on your computer. Between that and the Alexa toolbar integrated with my IE, I doubt if I've seen a traditional popup in, gosh...six months, maybe?

Josh

[mckerney]

When I got my new computer a couple days ago I found that the Google toolbar now has a handy popup blocker. Haven't really had any problems with popups since downloading the newest version.