How do I make Internet Explorer stop from popping up every 10 minutes?

Question

I don't even use IE, but it keeps popping up webpages every 10 minutes.

I killed it in task manager, but it reopens itself 10 minutes later. I tried to uninstall IE completely, but it doesn't really go.

• I ran a full scan with spybot. It finds only cookies.
• I ran a full scan with Lavasoft Ad-Aware. It also only finds cookies.
• I ran a full scan with AVAST Anti virus. it finds nothing.

Answer 1

I'd give malwarebytes a shot - its good enough a malware-removal tool than many malware apps try to block its installer. I'd also check your hosts.txt file and ensure that its the original.

If its not visible, it COULD be a rootkit - its a little hard to use but rootkit revealer is the de-facto standard, but there are others such as one by sophos i'd give a try as well.

Offline/liveav scanners are good as well - avira is the one i've used but there's a few other including

Of course if all else fails, you might want to consider a full reinstall.

Answer 2

SUPERAntiSpyware is very useful, and is free for home users.

SUPERAntiSpyware Free Edition is 100% Free and will detect and remove thousands of Spyware, Adware, Malware, Trojans, KeyLoggers, Dialers, Hi-Jackers, and Worms. SUPERAntiSpyware features many unique and powerful technologies and removes spyware threats that other applications fail to remove.

Answer 3

Two more rootkit scanners

http://www.gmer.net/

http://www.thestubware.com/

Answer 4

Another idea would be to run msconfig from Start->Run, go to the Startup tab and see if anything suspicious is checked. Check the location of all items set to launch on startup.

You could also download process explorer from MS from this location:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

Open process explorer then go to View->Select Columns and make sure Image Path is checked. Process explorer will show you everything that is running and the file location of each running process. You can sort by Path and check for anything running from suspicious locations. Anything running from temporary locations or files or folders with seemingly random characters are suspicious.

If you aren't sure about a process, upload it to VirusTotal.com. VirusTotal will scan the file with about 40 engines.

You can also quickly verify some files in process explorer by doing this:

right-click on the process->properties->Image Tab->Verify button - this will verify MS processes.

Hope this helps.