Today I help Ashley reformat her laptop. She was getting a ton of pop ups whenever she was online and no amount of spyware/adware tools was able to remove them. I had suspected that she has install some spyware into your laptop but instead of trying to find it I figure the best cure was a reformat. Besides, she was due for one anyway. Generally, I reformat all my comps every six months or so to remove all the junk that accumulates. I’ve gotten it to the point where I can do it blindfolded.
After the reformat, we went about re-installing all her programs one at a time to try to figure out which one had the spyware. Imagine my shock when it turned out to be MSN Plus! When installing MSN Plus, if you do not check “I don’t wish to support your sponsors” you will get adware installed that will pop up near full page ads almost every minute! Bad Microsoft! Very bad!