New Firefox Problem?

I am having trouble with Firefox and it's a problem that started this morning after my mother turned on the computer and opened the program.  Whenever Firefox is open, I get pop-ups that I never used to get.  They aren't pop-ups that appear when I click on a link.  They are pop-ups that appear out of nowhere.  

In addition, I'm getting a strange thing happening when I perform a Google search and get my search results.  When I click on a link I am immediately taken to a new search engine (whose name I won't mention here for obvious reasons).  I am able to get to my desired page by clicking the back button and then clicking on the link a second time.

Needless to say, this is annoying.  I'm running my antiviral and spyware programs as I type this and if anything is found, I'll update this post.  Until then:  DAMN YOU, POP-UP -BLOCKER GETTING-AROUNDER CODE WRITER!

Comments

[Coyote]

I am not very good with this stuff, but it sounds like a BHO (browser help object) problem. If you were running IE, I would say it was definitely this - I don't know how much Firefox relies on the same BHO structure. There use to be a program called BHO Demon to that was fee and let you see what was going on and fix problems, but I think the author no longer supports it. For example, inserted BHO's can definitely change your search page.

As an alternative, you might try hijackthis, also free, which lets you look at a variety of potential problems including BHO issues and remove stuff that should not be there

[Phil]

Thanks. I downloaded a pop-up blocking program called AdArrest and it's been running for about an hour now. I haven't gotten any pop-ups for awhile. But I'm still having problems with my Google searches. I found that double-clicking links instead of single-clicking them seems to take me to my desired page instead of the spammers' pages.

The only other action I took was to manually clean out my temporary file. My spyware program (AdAware) is still running its full scan and nothing suspicious has been reported yet.