Pop-ups on the internet!

I am being annoyed to death here. I paid for and down-loaded a program that put a stop to "message" pop-ups, but now I am being plagued by "naughty" ads that keep popping up at all times. There is even a "naughty" website that keeps replacing my home page address, even though I go into internet options and change it back to Yahoo. Any suggestions? Thanks! 42

Try downloading Ad Aware by Lavasoft. Its free and it will scan your computer for the cause of the annoying things, allowing you to delete them.

This is one that is recommended by AOL. But I don't think that you have to have AOL to download it. I have it, and it works fine for me. I run it every week, and each time it finds new adware and spyware that some web site has stuck me with.

http://aolsvc.downloadcenter.aol.com/filedetail.jsp2?file=30290

Thanks Kara and Mathman.........I am trying a few websites to see which one works best for my computer.......42

AdAware doesn't block pop ups, but it's very useful anyway.

A simple and convenient solution for those nasty pop ups: install the Google toolbar, it now blocks them up (beautifully). I love it, I love it!

http://toolbar.google.com/

Windspirit........these pop-ups have invaded my homepage address on my browser.......would it keep that from happening I wonder? (first I have to get rid of the pesky ones I have....) 42

I understand that you can change it back every time something replaces it? (I'm making sure, because I had a virus a few weeks ago that prevented me from doing that -- I got rid of it quickly, though ).

You need a program that won't let anyone change your settings. I just know of one that won't anyone change your home page, but it's a commercial product. ($34). I've tried it, and it's really very good. It's called "Security Administrator", here's a link:
http://www.softheap.com/secagent.html
Here's a link to a more pricey program ($49), "1st Security Agent":
http://www.softheap.com/newadmin.html

(You can try them both for free). I've tried this one, too, and it was great. I didn't remember if it had the option to disable changing the home page, but I Googled it, and it seems that it does:
http://www.softheap.com/security-faq/disable_changing_home.html

But they only work on Windows. Btw, if you have Windows XP, there might be a way to disable changing the home page in there. Read this (to know where to find it, please note that you'd have to enable the "Disable changing home page settings", not disable it, the guy from the discussion was looking for the opposite of what you want to do):
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Applications/Q_20660348.html
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/WinXP/Q_20639532.html

I've found a cheaper program that also does it ($19,90):
http://www.history-cleaner.com/

Hopefully something of that will be useful to you.