Long time since I've been here. Slowly been moving away from HL, but I could use some help with adware.
I have the AVG monitor thingy running in the background, and yesterday while browsing The Underdogs (henceforth HOTU) it popped up a message saying that I's downloaded a trojan installer and told me to run the scanner. I ran it and it picked up two similiar .exe files. I'm not sure if they've run or not, I don't remember downloading anything like that, the only way I can think of it downloading through my actions is if I accidentally clicked Yes on the "Do you want to download and run..." box which pops up a lot at HOTU. I followed the path and found the files in C:Documents and Settings[username]Local SettingsTemp and another one in a folder inside it. Both files were deleted, and while I was at it I also saw an executable called adware_installer or something similar. I deleted it (past the recycle bin). That was yesterday, and now I've found that ads keep popping up when I go to sites. I've checked other sites too and it isn't a coincidence, there must be some adware running on my PC. I've updated and run Ad-Aware, Spybot and AVG, but the only thing that turned up were a few tracking cookies in Ad-Aware. I can't see anything suspicious in Add/Remove programs, but I have a lot of programs and some I don't know the use of. While I was typing I've had several pop-ups and I recognise at least one from HOTU, but I'm not sure if they came from there. In the HOTU news page there has recently been mention of them removing self-installing ads, which could be where they are coming from. But still, surely one of the scanners would have picked up something if (assuming they are from HOTU) they are quite old? I've tried closing all browser windows and restarting, so it can't be a Javascript loop running. I'm confused about how I haven't had any adware up until yesterday, when I deleted the installer. Surely nothing would happen from deleting the installer though, unless it's some strange program that installs itself but only activates when you delete the installer. I'm really stuck now, but if anyone has a program I can use or something to try I'd be grateful.
Look for LoadQM. It's not spyware, it's part of the "useless crap that windows automatically loads up". All's I heard of it is that it trys to "arrange" things in your browser for easy usage, but all it really does is eat up resources.
