Strange graphics show up in strange places

I am using IE 5.5 on Win98se, in the last couple weeks I have noticed strange graphics that show up in strange places. The most common is this little red box with a heart in it that says "Free Love Reading" "Click here ". It will show up on any site I am at, even this site. When it is in the place of an image that is a link and you click on it it will take you to the correct page.

Also graphics from one site that I have been to recently will show up at other sites I go to, usually they are stretched out of shape to fit in another spot.

I ran Adaware and Trojan-remover and no joy. I even tried right clicking the strange image and saving it to see if I could figured out what it was calling itself, but it wants to save as an untitled bitmap. I knew something was really hokie when this stupid little graphic file showed up on the mast head at the microsoft knowledge base........... any clues?

pat

 

Try an online virus scan (Trend is particularly good at detecting and removing nuisance programs).

If that returns no hits, have a look under MSCONFIG's Startup tab and see whether there are any strange entries.

Also, does clicking the image actually lead you to a site? If so, what is the URL?

 

I did the online scan you mentioned, also scanned with my Norton antivirus, nothing. Nothing weird in the start-up tab.

When you click on the image it takes you to the site the webmaster intended, the link works, just the image is ******* up.

But I think a light bulb just went on in my head. I am using Zonealarm and it may be the pop-up blocking feature. I have webpages on a free server and the banner ad on the top of my page just popped up this stupid little graphic. I looked at the source code (because it's my page and I know the simple code I used to write the page) and here is this !-- BEGIN Popup Blocker --

I will disable this feature of zonealarm and see what happens....

 

Well, it does seem to be the Zonealarm. Now that I know what's doing it, it won't bother me so much. Better than all those pop-ups! Thanks for letting me bounce off you!

pat

 

Ah - so ZA presumably substitutes an alternative graphic for any blocked ads. Nice to know and thanks for posting back