On my new Compaq laptop from the Staples deal(CQ60-420US)a few weeks back I installed Spywareblaster last night. Immediately afterwards the animated ad in the upper right of my Earthlink home page(http://my.earthlink.net/) stopped showing anything and now is just an empty white box. This is how it is on all of my WinXP machines and I thought it was a Win Vista issue because it works normally on all of the Vista machines in the house. But it seems that instead it must be a setting somewhere that blocks the ad content. I tried rebooting the laptop and not running spywareblaster but it still shows just a blank box. I uninstalled spywareblaster with the same results. So the spywareblaster install may just be a coincidence. I don't know if the running ad is a flash object or java or what since now that it no longer works right clicking on it just gives the standard right click menu.

I don't really care that the ads no longer show but I would like to know what changed.

Any ideas?

It's hard to say, it may have updated your hosts file with new IPs, there may be a component that is still running... What is Spywareblaster doing for you?

Personally, I don't load anything like that because I feel it corrupts my system and will not unload fully. There's way too much anti-spiware out there that actually IS spyware. I am very happy with NOD32 and Windows Defender in combination with not installing questionable applications.

I've used Spywareblaster on my XP machines for years since Alan recomended it in the Good Software to have thread. As far as I know it has never created any problems before.

Did you check your hosts file to see if there is anything in there? Also can you try a different browser and see if you get the same thing.

In Spywareblaster there's a list of websites that are blocked. I'm thinking it's blocked content from one of the listed sites. You can reinstall Spywareblaster and disable the protection to change everything back to what it was. Spywareblaster doesn't actually run on the computer, it makes changes to the system to help prevent certain types of spyware from being installed and blocks access to known "problem" websites. When you close the program or uninstall it the changes made are still present.

Thanks guys, I'll go give that a shot.

Here's more info: https://www.javacoolsoftware.com/support/in...=42&nav=0,4

It seems like it should be an option to revert it's changes when you uninstall it. Interesting.

Alan you did it again!

I'm in the basement on my old Dell XP desktop so I loaded Spywareblaster and disabled all protection and now the ad box does show up on it again. I assume it will do the same on the laptop.

When I right click on the ad and choose properties I find it is from ad.doubleclick.net and the ad itself says "Ads by Pulse 360"

I assume if I wanted to enable spywareblaster and still see the ads I should look for either of those two entries in the blocked list and uncheck them?

Yup, worked on the laptop too. I can leave the Internet Explorer protection enabled and it will still show the ads but as soon as I enable the Restricted sites protection they disappear.

I had been wondering why those ads showed up on some computers in the house and not on others for a while now.

Also, Alan, the link you put up for javacoolsoftware taught me something I didn't know. I thought you had to run Spywareblaster each time you rebooted and then close it for it's protection to be active. In fact all you have to do is run it once a week or so just to check for new protection updates. That means I can put it on other's machines even if I know they will never remember to run it each time they turn on their computer.

Cool.

You can look at the list of blocked sites and uncheck the doubleclick/pulse 360 ones. It may also have something to do with blocking tracking cookies. I know when I do a search online I tend to see ads related to what I searched for. For instance, I was looking at the Subaru Forrester and went to a few different websites to check out the car. Soon after I was seeing Subaru ads on other websites I visit. Coincidence? I think not. I don't have anything but antivirus software installed on that system.