Popup Problem

I'm on my friend's laptop and every few miutes, he's bombarded with popups. I've run a scan with ad-aware and spyware sweeper. He had a whole lot, but they're coming up. Ive emptied his temp files and looked over his hijack log, which seemed normal. I've also done an antivirus scan..

This is really odd, do you guys have any suggestions?

 

If this is XP have you tried turning off the messenger service?

Ive also come across this trojan several times lately might be worth a look
http://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/virusencyclo/default5.asp?VName=TROJ_POPMON.A

Id also suggest going in the tips,tricks and how to forum here at Majorgeeks there some good info there on how to interpret Hijack this log files

 

Alright, they weren't messenger popups, they'r acual ads =/ and I couldn't find any trace of the trojan.

 

Have you tried Spybot, Ad-aware? What kind of ads are you getting?

 

So this is XP yes

Have you fired up the task manager and looked for a rogue service which must be running these ads

Also have a look in Msconfig and see what programs are starting with windows
look carefully these sort of programs often disguise themselves as normal windows processes

Anything in services or start-up you cant figure out what it is, post it up and well try and help

 

I've done adaware and anoher program, also the startp list is massive, it would take a long time to sift through all of that. And there are ton of processes...>_>

 

Unfortunately thats your best bet to find the culprit
for your start-up list go here and check each one
http://www.sysinfo.org/startuplist.php

You could try going to Msconfig---services tab--=check the box to hide Microsoft services and see whats left
Then use Google to look up each one and see what comes up
After that you are going to have to start Googling everything in Task Manager
Theres some good tips for using Google in the tips tricks forum

Sorry but sometimes troubleshooting can be very time consuming,perhaps get your friend to do the spade work while you have a coffee

 

He's too compter illiterate to do any spade work, sadly. The startup that I'm not sure about is wnsapitr and would getting a pop-up blocker stop the pop-ups? And if so, what would you guys recommend?

 

Your problem probably lies deeper than just a pop up blocker, but anyway this is free pop up blocker: http://www.panicware .com
Click on: download at top center of page, then scroll down to Pop-Up Stopper FREE Edition 3.1.1012
I use it on 4 pc's work's great.
There maybe something here on MG too.

I had simialar problem with add's poping up radomly on one of my pc's, was pulling my hair out trying stop em, ran: spybot, anti-vir, avg, spy sweeper, and half dozen other programs/ not all were loaded at same time/ I even loaded McAfee ativirus 7.0 was suprized it found some stuff the other's did not!

Still not sure exactly what the problem was (fixed now) narrowed down to two things the two files or programs McAfee found and or Winamp shareware program (now uninstalled)
I'll try to post the two files lator if I did'nt delete, I'm on different pc at moment

 

Hmm, I tried telling him to uninstall any program that he didn't need, since they may be the source of the problem. But I think I'll try some more antivirus, if the problem lies there.

 

Okay therein lies one of your problems
use Task Manager to end the process wnsapitr.exe

Re-Run Hijack this and look for this line
O4 - HKCU\..\Run: [WNST] C:\WINDOWS\System32\wnsapitr.exe
close all browser windows and check the box to fix this

Reboot into safe mode and delete this
C:\WINDOWS\System32\wnsapitr.exe

You will need to show hidden files and folders to see it