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Computer Repair &
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Avoid & Stop Adware,
Popups & Spyware from being installed via ActiveX

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Are you tired
of your PC being infected with adware and spyware from unscrupulous
websites? Are you annoyed by the number of Popups & Popup ads you get
on your computer? Well there's an easy way to stop the greedy scum of the
earth from messing up your computer. It's a little time consuming at first
to set it up, but Internet Explorer has all the tools you need for
free.

The culprit here is Microsoft's® web
technology called ActiveX. ActiveX is normally used for good purposes such
as allowing the Windows Update site to determine which updates your PC
needs or to facilitate the running of Flash animations, but the creeps on
the Internet are now using ActiveX to infect your machine with Adware
(Popups) and spyware. If you get enough of this crap on your machine, it
will bring it to it's knees.

STEP 1:

Make sure you have an anti-virus program
running and make sure it's virus definitions are up to date. If you do not
run an up to date anti-virus program, then you have no right using the
Internet. You have no excuse since you can get several anti-virus programs
for free. AVG anti-virus and
Avast
anti-virus are two that come to mind. You can also get ETrust
EZ Armor free for the first year. It includes a free firewall too,
which you can optionally install. I highly recommend to users who use a
dialup connection to have a software firewall to prevent Internet hackers
from hacking into their PCs.

STEP 2:

When it comes to e-mail, do not open any
e-mail or attachments unless you were expecting that e-mail and/or
attachment from the sender. If you use Outlook or Outlook Express, turn
off any Preview Pane or Auto Preview, download your e-mail and before you
open up any e-mail, go to File and click Work Offline. Now you can safely
read your e-mail without the e-mail contacting a server on the Internet
(so it cannot download a bad program or harvest your e-mail address). When
you are done reading your e-mail then go to File and click Work Online.
(Note: In Outlook Express, if you are showing your Status bar at the
bottom of the window, then you'll see a Working Online icon. Just double
click it to work offline and vise-versa to work online again.)

STEP 3:

Unfortunately an anti-virus or firewall
program will not protect you from adware or spyware. So you should
install, update and run Ad-aware and Spybot Search &
Destroy to clean your machine from adware & spyware. If they find
culprits, be certain to check Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel to see
if the offending program is listed there. If it is, then remove it with
Add/Remove Programs and then rerun Ad-aware & Spybot again. In other
words, it's always best to remove programs via Add/Remove Programs.
Exception: Do not remove Windows Media Player in Add/Remove Programs. Use
Ad-aware & Spybot as a last resort. Instructions for running these
tools can be found in the Monthly Maintenance Instructions found on the Downloads
& Links page.

STEP 4:

Reset your security settings for
Internet Explorer. Launch Internet Explorer and on the top toolbar click
Tools and select Internet Options from the menu. Click the Security tab
and click the Internet icon (the globe).

Click the Custom Level
button.

Where it says "Reset custom settings",
click the drop down arrow and select Medium from the list. It should now
show Reset to: Medium in the window as shown above. Click the Reset button
and click Yes if you get a warning. In the larger white window are your
Internet security settings. In the section labeled "ActiveX controls and
plug-ins" there are five settings we want to set. Set them to Prompt,
Disable, Disable, Prompt and Prompt in that order as shown above and
below. You should only need to change the last 2 of the 5
settings.

Click Ok and Yes to the
Warning.

Optional: You
can also Disable all five of the ActiveX settings to be prompted less, but
if pages are not displaying fully or PDF documents are not displaying,
then you'll have to add that site to your trusted zone, but only do this
if you trust the site. I personally have my settings as shown to Prompt me
on pages running ActiveX, but some people get really annoyed at the
frequency of the prompts, so I advise them to Disable all five of the
ActiveX settings.

You'll be back to the Security tab
again. Click the Trusted sites icon (the green circle with a
checkmark).

Click the Custom Level
button.

Where it says "Reset custom settings", click the
drop down arrow and select Medium from the list. It should now show Reset
to: Medium in the window as shown above. Click the Reset button and click
Yes to the warning. Do NOT change any of the other settings. Click
OK.

Now when you visit web pages that run ActiveX a box
will appear as shown below. (Unless you chose to disable all ActiveX as
per the Optional
paragraph above)

If you can trust the site, click Yes. I trust sites
that are well known reputable companies. If I can figure out how the
company is making money besides popups or infecting my machine with
adware, then I'll trust the site and click Yes. If I don't know anything
about the site (going to sites via search engines for example), then I
click No. When you click No, another box will appear as shown below. (This
box may appear, even if you disabled all ActiveX as per the Optional paragraph
above)

Click OK. This can be a real pain in the butt after
awhile. To make it a little bit easier for the sites that you visit
regularly (that you trust), we can add those sites to our Trusted sites
list.

STEP 5:

Add sites that we visit often and that we trust to
the Trusted sites list as follows.

Let's use the www.lavasoftusa.com Ad-aware site as
an example. Using Internet Explorer, go to http://www.lavasoftusa.com/. I want
to trust the lavasoftusa Ad-aware site. To begin, I click Yes to the
ActiveX question box. The page displays and you should highlight the
portion of the address in the address bar so that the period before
lavasoftusa and up to and including the com (or net or org or edu, etc.)
is highlighted as shown below. Click your mouse pointer just before the
period and while holding down the left mouse button, drag the mouse to
highlight the text up to and including the com. Leave go of the mouse
button and the text will be highlighted as shown. In general, we want to
highlight the com (or net or org or edu, etc., the period before the com
(or net or org or edu, etc., the word before the period and the period in
front of that word as shown below.

Place your mouse pointer over the blue text and
right click the highlighted text Choose copy from the menu. Now click
Tools on the top toolbar and select Internet Options from the menu. Click
the Security tab. Click the Trusted sites icon and then click the Sites
button.

Uncheck the small box where it says Require server
verification... if it is checked.

In the "Add this Web site to the zone:" box type in
a * (star) and right click next to the star and select paste from the
menu. A star acts as a wildcard. Normally the server's name at the site
you are visiting is www, but not always. The star will allow us to trust
all the servers at the site. Click the Add button and click OK. Click Ok
again and you'll be back at the site. Note in the bottom right hand corner
that it now displays Trusted sites.

Notes: Some sites will not actually be trusted
until you close Internet Explorer and go back into the site even though it
says Trusted sites on the bottom right. Some sites display content from
several sites at once, so you may still be prompted to allow ActiveX.
Usually the extra content is only ads so I'll click No to the ActiveX
prompts. These sites may show a Mixed mode status on the bottom right. On
many sites that you say no to, you will find that the page displays
perfectly. You then have to wonder what the site is doing running
ActiveX.

RULES: If a site is fun
AND free, then it isn't free. I generally don't trust sites that are fun
AND free. If you can't figure out how the free site is making money, then
there's a good chance they are getting paid to put adware on your machine.
Sites with numerous popups should not be trusted. If you keep getting bad
programs on your machine detected by Ad-aware or Spybot, then you have to
question if you're trusting or clicking Yes to sites that should not be
trusted. Check your trusted sites list to see if you are being too
trusting. Generally free games, free software, free game cheat codes, free
music, gambling and adult material sites should not be trusted.

Whenever you get popups, you should never click
anywhere inside the popup. They may try to trick you with a Yes or No
question or with a No Thanks button. They may say your settings are not
optimized. There are all kinds of tricks to get you to click inside of a
popup. Just exit out of all popups using the X in the top right hand
corner of the popup or by right clicking the popup sitting on the bottom
taskbar and choosing Close from the menu. You may think that the ActiveX
question boxes are popups. They are NOT popups as they are part of the
security features that we have set up. You may click Yes or No inside of
the ActiveX question boxes.

STEP 6 :

Go to the Advanced tab in Internet
Options and UNCHECK "Install on demand (Internet Explorer)" and "Install
on demand (Other)" and click OK.

STEP 7:

Visit Microsoft's® Windows Update
center, click the Scan button and install all of the Critical updates.
Scan for updates often, as patches for flaws in Internet Explorer are
posted often.

You can avoid all of this ActiveX
nonsense (steps 4 through 6) by not using Internet Explorer as your
browser and using Mozilla Firefox instead. Just follow the instructions HERE
to install Mozilla Firefox and use that as your browser.

RIGHT CLICK
HERE and choose "Save Target As..." from the menu to save this page to
your computer's hard drive for future reference.

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Last modified: March 22, 2006