Commercials on my computer?

[DarkFire1004]

Someone give me an answer quickly. For some reason my computer's playing commercials or something. I'm being serious. I was just watching some Nostaglia Critic when suddenly I'm actually getting commercials. Right now, there's a commercial about Spray and Watch Bleach or something. Now it's Kitchen Caribbean? I'm also hearing a commercial about Dexter?

I've closed out everything and it's still playing. I don't want to shut my computer off yet because I want to find out what's going on. Anybody have any help? I'm really confused. Right now I'm running a virus scan, but nothing's come up yet.

When I say commercials, I mean literally there are commercials playing out of my speakers when there are absolutely no programs up.

 

[ToxicShock]

Re: Commercials on my computer?

It's just sound right? No windows?

Yeah, that's happened to me a lot. Mainly frequently on my computers downward spiral into a crash.

Ya got viruses son, don't know any better way to put it.

 

[DarkFire1004]

Re: Commercials on my computer?

Viruses, huh.. THAT is a bitch. So I just gotta scan and quarantine them right? Or am I doomed?

 

[ToxicShock]

Re: Commercials on my computer?

Scans won't cut it for some reason. Ya gotta get someone who really understands computers, like those people who don't fuck around with virus scans, but instead know run commands, know how to look at your startup programs, what should and shouldn't be in system32 or something.

All I know is I tried to the scanners and my computer was on the edge of death, then my bro takes a look at it, like 15 minutes later it was fine.

I'm talking commercials, search engine redirects, my desktop changing randomly. All that fun shit. You know how annoying it is to try and research shit and then when you type something into google and click a link, the page is something COMPLETELY different than what it said, and at first you think it's a scan, then you realize, no you're computer is just fucked.

 

[Shrike7]

Re: Commercials on my computer?

Has your computer been running really slowly lately? I know a couple times when one of the side ads has sound attached, and they continue playing through my speakers for up to a couple minutes after I close my window, it could be that they load to some side process so they keep going after you close stuff.

 

[Nunu]

Re: Commercials on my computer?

this might be a stupid suggestion consider you said you closed everything, but might it be the adds that come after every video on nostalgia critique.

 

[Wonderboy]

Re: Commercials on my computer?

What operating system are you running?
I'm not one of the complete badasses, but I managed to keep an old windows xp computer alive for 6 years with limewire and utorrent running constantly...

My main tip would be to run different virus programs... But be careful that you shut down one before you activate another, or they'll start fighting it out in your computer so to speak.
Good ones are:
Avast
AVG
and, and... Damn, I can't remember... You should NOT use pirated virus-software... I know it sound kinda obvious, but I've talked to sooo many people wondering why their pc are sending info-packets and they're all "But I have this really great pirated virus software..."

Use some of the free software of RELIABLE sites... Download.com is pretty good for astuff like that.

Also, If you open up taskmanager and go to the processes, you can sorta figure out if they're supposed to be there or not...

I once got this really anoying virus that I couldn't delete, but the process was "Keylog.exe" so I kinda knew...

Yeah... also, a reboot and then checking which programs start up by themselves can help a lot...

Oh... and for some reason people new to this tend to end the Process "Explorer.exe" don't. It's all the toolbars and stuff...

 

[Nunu]

Re: Commercials on my computer?

pffft, i end explorer all the time, it never did me any harm. you just dont click on turn off.

 

[ToxicShock]

Re: Commercials on my computer?

What operating system are you running?
I'm not one of the complete badasses, but I managed to keep an old windows xp computer alive for 6 years with limewire and utorrent running constantly...

My main tip would be to run different virus programs... But be careful that you shut down one before you activate another, or they'll start fighting it out in your computer so to speak.
Good ones are:
Avast
AVG
and, and... Damn, I can't remember... You should NOT use pirated virus-software... I know it sound kinda obvious, but I've talked to sooo many people wondering why their pc are sending info-packets and they're all "But I have this really great pirated virus software..."

Use some of the free software of RELIABLE sites... Download.com is pretty good for astuff like that.

Also, If you open up taskmanager and go to the processes, you can sorta figure out if they're supposed to be there or not...

I once got this really anoying virus that I couldn't delete, but the process was "Keylog.exe" so I kinda knew...

Yeah... also, a reboot and then checking which programs start up by themselves can help a lot...

Oh... and for some reason people new to this tend to end the Process "Explorer.exe" don't. It's all the toolbars and stuff...

Yeah, what he said, the only bad part is sometimes viruses will be named the same as existing processes, so it's hard to delete, that's what happened to me anyway

 

[Caulder]

Re: Commercials on my computer?

All I can recommend is to stop clicking so many links on 4chan, and get a good anti-virus program. I personally like AVG. It tends to be overprotective, but that's a good thing.

 

[XSI]

Re: Commercials on my computer?

For using the taskmanager, and checking on processes.

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Search the process here, if it's listed as a windows process that should not be closed, then do not close it.
Using windows defender(Or whatever it's called) you can also change which programs run on startup, I have no idea where that menu is, I just know it exists, I suggest you try to first close the processes that are useless/just bad in general, and then go check on what gets started on startup that seems suspicious.

 

[Loli Defense Force]

Re: Commercials on my computer?

Is it still happenning? If it's a one time thing, it could easily be MSN or Firefox acting up, as both do have a known history of problems with the process not closing when you exit the program. If it's still happening then you should explore the other options.

The main thing for this is it really doesn't seem like a virus. Because this is either a) the virus being benign (viral marketting haha...) or b) the programmer is being weird. The reason I say this is because viruses tend to do one of two things.

1. Be silent and hope you don't notice (botnet)

2. Be as visible as possible in the hopes that either your computer becomes unfunctional, or hoping that you're stupid enough to download another program that it is offering...


Just my two cents.

 

[DarkFire1004]

Re: Commercials on my computer?

I ended up using this program:

You must be registered to see the links

They detected 10 different viruses on my computer. They were able isolate and delete them all and the commercials haven't appeared since.

I'm very certain that it wasn't just another application that was open because of two reasons.

1) It was doing these commercials in bursts. There would be about ten minutes worth of commercials playing on my speakers then they would stop for a minute or two. Then another five minutes would play and maybe another four minutes of silence.

2) When I booted up my computer today before I started the scan, I got a couple commercials before I even opened Mozilla up.

 

[ToxicShock]

Re: Commercials on my computer?

Yeah, thats what I had, and that program is what I use. It's very decent.

 

[Wonderboy]

Re: Commercials on my computer?

Good thing that you found yourself a virus program, still, if you're using freeware I'd consider getting avast and/or AVG as well and just have them inactive exept for like once or twice a month when you use them to scan the comp. Just make sure not to have them running at the same time...

 

[lurker]

Re: Commercials on my computer?

I use Spybot Search and Destroy. Also a good program, and dad can testimate it's better then Norton lol

 

[Alias]

Re: Commercials on my computer?

Norton IS a virus. It's damn near impossible to get off your hard drive, even on a Mac.

 

[DarkFire1004]

Re: Commercials on my computer?

Norton's a virus? MCAFEE is a virus. Even worse, I used that to scan at first and it found jackshit!

 

[Alias]

Re: Commercials on my computer?

McAfee's actually decent. I've never had any problems with it. And as for it not finding anything... you can run ten different scans and they'll all find something different. That's why you usually have to have two or three (or more) programs to remove stuff; they all run on different algorithms. Doesn't sound like you had very much bad stuff on your PC which is probably why it didn't find anything - it wasn't looking in the right place. Aside from that, in my experience, McAfee's more of a preventative measure like a firewall than a go-to for when you've already stepped in it.

Norton, on the other hand, doesn't find anything at all, doesn't prevent anything from happening, has a HUGE footprint on your hard drive, as well as being on the levels of multiple rootkits hard to remove.

 

[Wonderboy]

Re: Commercials on my computer?

Norton is a virus absolutely, just because it follows the definition.
It's hard to remove.

It damages your system, (yes, it does, especially if you run it togehter with other virus programs... As a thing to get rid of competitors it registers a lot of antivirus software as viruses. Also, a neighboor of mine had Norton, and it said one of the System32 folders was a virus... She followed instructions, and turns out it was a vital part of the windows core programming and it's been fucking in all the Windows versions since -98... I mean FUCK!)

And it annoys you like nothing else.