I’ve been getting some really annoying pop-ups lately. I think I know why but I have no idea how to stop them.

I’ve run several virus scans. I’ve deleted all unnecessary files on my computer. I’ve searched the add or remove programs function from the control panel and couldn’t find anything suspicious.

Yet I keep getting pop-ups that read “System Alert: Malware threats” or “Warning: Your computer might be infected with a backdoor Trojan that allows the remote attacker to perform various malicious actions.”

I get pop-ups that look like they are running a virus scan. They then urge me to download anti-virus software.

I’ve been using AVG 8.0 and I have never had any problems with viruses. My computer isn’t slowing down. Nothing else seems to be happening. I think the virus here is trying to trick me into downloading it. I’m not going to.

This problem seems to have started when I tried to catch up on an episode of Eli Stone I missed last week. American networks don’t allow Canadian access to their streams. Some blogs have links to streaming episodes and I searched and searched and still couldn’t find one that would work. I found one but it asked me to run an active control or something like that. I did. The video still didn’t work. I knew I made a mistake.

I’ve been careful about my online activities. I hope I haven’t given someone access to my computer and files.

The surprising thing is that the virus scan I keep running scans through close to 500,000 objects. I don’t know how computers work but I don’t understand how there can be so many things on my computer.

AVG has found a few trojans and suspicious cookies. But I’m still getting these pop-ups. I don’t know what else to do. Should I upgrade and buy the full version or should I just keep ignoring the pop-ups.

Any ideas here. Thanks!