Have I got about:blank ?

I have recently noticed that when I visit some websites (only a very few) I get a pop-up appear on my screen. I have the standard microsoft pop up blocker on my machine and dont usually, if ever get pop-ups. I noticed it always appears when i visit packetnews.com and have also noticed it on one or two other sites I have visited recently. The pop-ups always seems to have about:blank writen in the top left title corner of the window. The other thing I noticed happen today was windows asked me if it could "navigate sub-frames across different domains" (If i remembed that correctly) while I was on the same site even though I hadn't clicked on anything.

I have AVG, spybot, Ad-aware, spyware blaster and Zone alarm all installed on my pc, all of which are up to date. I also have my internet settings set up to major geeks suggested how to protect yourself from malware/adware etc settings. I have done a scan with spybot and Ad-aware which came back with no problems and I have just run a full system scan with AVG which showed no problems although it did say it had changed C:\WINDOWS\system32\shell32.dll.

One last thing I have noticed happening in the last week or so is the length of time it takes for my pc to start up. I have noticed a large white loading bar appear along the bottom of the screen just after I swith on. I dont remember this appearing before. After this bar goes away the windows XP loading screen comes up and stays for a good 40 seconds before my user login screen appears. This might be totally unrelated but thought I mention it just incase.

I dont have any problems accessing my homepage and everything else seems to be running as normal. Is it common to get pop-ups from sites like packetnews even if you have anti pop-up software installed?. The thing that concerned me most was just the fact that any pop-ups I do get say about:blank in the title so basically I'm just wondering if its possible or sounds like I may be infected with about:blank?. Am i over reacting?, just so I know whether or not to run through the steps in the about:blank removal thread.

Any feedback on this will be much appreciated. I can also post a hijackthis log if required. Thanks for any help in advance.

 

If you mean, packetnews.com.

IE, has a slide in popup.
Firefox has a slide in popup.
Opera does not.

Typical DHTML popups are the new rage nowadays, or .swf (flash) based popups.

A script blocker can help.

But, if only a few websites are causing you issues, I would worry. Unless you are getting TONS of popups. At random times.