There's this piece of adware that's been on my computer for months now. Ad-Aware can't find it, It laughs at Spybot, and when i think i might have it manually removed, it comes back and haunts me. I even tried online spyware/adware programs but it has them beat as well.
Basically, it seems that it creates a popup whenever i start the internet and randomly as well. It seems to connect to this one site first, which tells it which ad to put on...
Also, 50% of the time it closes off after it pops up without me seeing what it is.
As soon as i coax the ad to popup i'll try to post the link that it keeps going to.
::EDIT::
xadsj-o.offeroptimizer.com
As a temporary halfway-solution, you could had that to your hosts file. If you've got Windows 2000/XP, open "C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts" in your favorite text editor and add this line to the bottom:
Code:
127.0.0.1 xadsj-o.offeroptimizer.com
Basically what that does is make Windows think that you are xadsj-o.offeroptimizer.com, but since you're probably not running a web server you'll see blank pages or error messages or something instead of ads in the popup windows, and more importantly it'll stop the spyware from contacting that address or using up more internet connection bandwidth.
I'll try googling that URL.
EDIT: I googled offeroptimizer and found
this forum topic, in which somebody says the trial version of webroot spy sweeper can remove offeroptimizer - it's worth a try.
If I were you, and I had something that my anti-spyware software couldn't remove, I'd just backup, format, and reinstall.
Any theories on how it got in? Installed anything recently? Or (if you don't have XP service pack 2) gone to any strange websites in IE?
When you say it starts creating popups when you "start the internet", do you mean MS Internet Explorer? Does the same thing happen if you use a different browser instead?
Format. Reinstall. Throw away IE use Firefox/Mozilla
It's gone now, but thanks anways tbbq.
Just out of curiousity, how did you get it to come off? Personally I've found that a trip into "Safe Mode" enables me to remove most adwares. I had one once that consisted of two processes - when one was closed, the other would reopen it. Went into safe mode and removed the directory. Also went into the registry to remove it from the "Run" section.
adaware sucks deseased balls. but its the best i can find. anywho, optimize, bargains and that other damn thing wont seem to leave my compy. i need to remove them from the system tasks evrey single time i reboot.
You know what you expose your computer to when you visit "bad bad bad" sites
Yeah, I know that "xxx" sites are very bad for adware stuff... I had to clean off tons of that stuff on some of my friends computers for them. (One of my friends, she had a laptop, 2.2 ghz celeron processor, but it was running like it was 1/10th it's speed. It turns out her former boyfriend and his friends used to visit these "bad bad bad" sites. The result? I had to get rid of over 1000 pieces of adware, not to mention a few vira as well.