There's lots of naughty software that gets into our machines - either advertising or to report our web browsing habits to shabby marketing companies - it's annoying and it slows the system down with all the rubbish running in the background that we don't know about - and it gets worse over time...
Download and install...
Spybot Search & Destroy (free)
Piriform's Ccleaner (free)
Mozilla Firefox Browser (free)
If Vista use Windows Defender - Software Explorer
If XP type msconfig in the Run box & click OK
Then...
Select the Startup list and deselect everything shown
Run Spybot and ask it to fix everything it finds (run spybot weekly or monthly)
Run Ccleaner and use the registry tool to tidy up and fix registry problems
Defragment your disk
Stop using Microsoft's Internet Explorer and start using the Firefox browser.
Consider installing AVG anti virus software (free)
This is what I do and I never see a pop-up and my system continues to run well.
Good luck...
Peccavi
December 2009