Reply #11: Cannot be stolen when it is off.

[longship]

What you probably have is an adware program which nags the hell out of you with pop-up commercials, although it might also be a virus, or spyware.

The best thing to do is to download a virus/spyware/adware scanner. There are many free ones on the net.

Once you install the scanner program and run it, it should clean the nasty bugger off your machine. Then, you should remove the scanner program as they are one of the *worst* offenders for slowing down your machine and popping up ads, etc.

I'm sorry that I cannot be more specific here, but I am not a Windows user for the very reasons which are becoming all too apparent to you at this point. I use Linux which is more-or-less immune to all these type of things. (Apple Mac is too.)