Worse Pop-up Ad

The worse pop-up ad that I get on a regular basis is "Get Free Gas for One Year" I can't X it out and ctrl-alt-del doesn't work. I end up manually shutiing down with the computer switch.
Any body else have this problem. Seems to occur when I X out of my home page (Excite) or the Milwaukee-Journal Sentinel newspaper.
Thanks for any replies. I have Adaware and AVG installed. Also google pop up ad program.
Larry Opheim

 

Have your tried ALT+F4? This command closes any active window, and can initiate Shutdown if none are active. You can use ALT+TAB to switch around active windows, as I doubt you want to click on it to make it "active ". Just keep pressing TAB while holding down ALT, and you will see the focus change in the small window that appears.
This could be some sort of Adware on your system, where the intended popup is replaced for you.

 

Pop Up Ads

Thanks Mark
I'm using your suggestions and for the most part it they work.
Larry Opheim

 

If you run NT4/2K/XP/2003 you could be seeing an advert sent via Messenger Service (not an IM but a part of the OS). This service is used on many business networks to send notifications to PCs on the network but for a home machine or a machine on a network not using the feature, it is simply a hole for spammers to exploit.

To disable it, click on start, on run, key in services.msc and click OK. Then locate Messenger, right-click and stop, right-click again and in Properties set the startup to 'disabled'. You won't see any Messenger pop-up boxes again unless you reinable it.