Popup ads with no programs open?

I had no programs running (IE: Internet Explorer, any messenger services, etc) and out of nowhere, I get a non IE looking popup ad, the sort that you can do with java, that doesn't have the IE color bar on top. Just a grey message box sort of ad. It was telling me that a certain unknown stock was going to boom. Seems like garbage. Anyway, what might be causing ads to appear with no visible programs running? I went through my system with Control Alt Delete, to see what functions besides programs were running, and all looked like they belong. There was one "StartEAK.exe" or something to that effect that stood out for being in caps, but other than that, nothing too weird seemed to be there. Any ideas what I could do? Things to delete? Files to purge? Thanks in advance.

I'd run ad-aware or similar adware finding and destroying programs, www.downloads.com should have some thing.

yeah ya got some adware d00der

Did it look like http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/p...e/stopspam.asp ?

If so it's a Messenger window. Go to Control Panel, Administrative, Services, and set Messenger service to Disable. Or go to a command prompt and try typing "net stop messenger" or something like that. Or have your firewall block ports 135, 137-139, and 445, according to one site. Any of those should work.

I downloaded and ran AdAware, and it only found a few cookies, and a component of Internet Explorer. I deleted all the cookies simply because they're useless anyway, but I was wary of deleting something that claims it's part of IE - specifically the "What's Related" or something. Alexa I think it called itself. If anyone says they know Alexa is something bad, I'll delete it, but otherwise I'm going to let it be.

Get rid of Alexa, pretty sure it's spyware.

Thanks for both replies Unne. Your first link put an end hopefully, to the ads that I knew spawned from Instant Messengers, and hopefully deleting Alexa (which really doesn't sound like IE software despite its claim) will stop these annoying ads that crash my Morrowind gaming sessions and such.

Messenger service isn't the same as an instant messenger client, nor is it the same thing as MSN Messenger. Messenger service is (supposed to be) a way to send messages to people on the same local area network. People abuse it by sending spam, but it's worthless to most people so it's safe to turn off.

I was getting those too. They confused me as I had already ran ad-aware and I still received them. They were especially annoying as they have caused a couple of games to crash. Thanks for the advice.

Yes, Messenger is Micros~1's version of Novell's Netware "Send Message" utility, except more useless because it doesn't have a reply button and it doesn't automatically list everyone who's logged into your LAN in a nice little selection box.