Was doing my usual thang, roaming around, chekcing into this thread and that, replying to one or two when I press the "more" button on the smilies to the right, to access the 700+ smiles...when.. GASP! I hear a click sound ( more like a disapproving "tsk" sound actually! hmmm..) and a small yellow exclamation icon appears. Now Ive NEVER had this happen to this site before! Are there pop ups on Gatch? Ive been told to unblock my pop ups so I can click on the buttons to take me to new screens.. How do I get rid of this? Wazzup wit dat anyways? eh? am I even making sense at this hour?

Have you done the windows update which upgrades Microsoft's Internet Explorer? That comes with a built in pop-up blocker (at last ). If so, to get rid of it you click on the yellow bar at the top and say to always allow popups from this site only. Or something to that effect.

We have several popups m'dear. The PM alerts, the smilie box and something else I think The pop ups can be allowed under your internet explorer settings for this site alone.

Course this is late (rawr), but it's good advice anyway. Look up Spybot, download it, and run it. It's a free anti-spyware program that actually removes the spyware (gasp!). If you have a lot of spyware, it can cause your computer to slow, hijack your homepage, and a bunch of other problems along with tons of pop-ups. If you get pop-ups, even with the pop-up blocker turned on, then you most likely have spyware. But like I said, Spybot does a good job. Ciao!

I would also suggest Lavasofts, ad aware professional which is also free and constantly updated!

I use Ad-aware and I've never had a problem here yet. *fingers crossed*

What's important is to have a good anti-spyware program, a good anti-virus (Norton is the flat out best), and if you are on broadband, you need to have a good firewall (again, Norton is the best). I prefer Spybot because it did not resort to spyware itself to get me to download it (and yes, Ad-aware did, though if you buy it, which is what they wanted me to do, it's good). Make sure your computer always has the latest critical updates for your computer (Microsoft products, anyways) because as holes are discovered, Microsoft tries to close them ASAP, but you have to download the update. Internet Explorer is the browser with the most security holes. Something my dad recommends (he fixes these problems for other people about 2-3 times a week) is Firefox. This one is the most secure browser.

All good advice, but Imi's problem is that the pop-ups aren't appearing because they're being blocked, not that pop-ups are appearing where they shouldn't be. The little yellow icon is what you get when you've downloaded the newest IE and suddenly it's blocking pop-ups all by itself (instead of relying on people having other software to do it). But absolutely, we should all have virus checkers and firewalls, and it's a very good idea to run spyware checks too. I only wish the latest IE with it's new security features wasn't preventing me from running TrendMicro's housecall, as I like to do a double-check from time to time

Ooooh. Heh. Misread. *Rereads posts* Good grief, how'd I miss that? As far as running the housecall, you could try using a different browser to run it (such as Firefox).