Got a bit of a mystery...

Hey guys. I decided to reformat my laptop becuase it was becoming sluggish. Everything went great. but then i noticed it was doing screwey things. Internet exploror had a stupid number of pop ups. and it got worse, now i got some spyware remover software that i didn't download (although it did uniinstall itself when i told it to) and i cant stay in one window for too long, it keeps changing the windows. When IE is open i can hear it clicking links and blocing some popups. I shut off IE.exe manually and it restarted itself after a while, starting the popups again. I got fed up with it finally when i coudln't play a game without it changing to another window every few minits, so i ran spybot search and destroy (is that still one of the best?) and it found a bounch of problems with the regestry, exe files ect. a bounch of stuff happened like programs trying to edit the registry and trying to effect spybot that spybot reported, too numerous to mention. it found tons of stuff. my question is: how? i did a reformat with a new copy of windows! i dont think i even serfed the internet. i just downloaded some games from steam... moved some stuff from my psp, and i think thats it before i started noticing the problems. my only idea is that i got it from a freinds network becuase i reformated it at his house... any ideas?

PS. the problems started right after the reformat, this is all in the corse of 24 hours.

EDIT: here are a few of the things spybot found
Command Service
Smifraud-C.coreservice
win32.small.azl
win32.VB.ahq

 

Suggestion 1: Download Comodo Personal Firewall (or ZoneAlarm if you're using Vista). Activate it and start training it.

Suggestion 2: Download Avast and schedule a boot time scan. Run a sweep with Spybot BEFORE rebooting.

Suggestion 3: After the Avast boot scan finishes, run Spybot again. Delete anything that it finds, then open Avast and schedule a SECOND boot-time scan. Reboot.

Suggestion 4: After the Avast boot scan finishes, run Spybot twice in a row. If Spybot is still finding problems after the second scan, reformat.

 

If all you did after a complete format and reinstallation of Windows is what you describe, then you've probably got problems with the games, your psp or a badly corrupted/infected copy of Windows. It's possible that your system was infected using your friend's network, but I doubt it if you already had your firewall, AV, antispyware apps, etc, installed beforehand.

For help with your situation, either another clean install, or some work cleaning the current mess is in order. I'm not certain what exactly is available at NBR in the way of help for cleaning up an infected machine, but these guys are excellent. Check out the "HiJack This" Forum. Of course, with a bit of reading and studying you can probably figure things out yourself, but it will take a while. I hope you clear this up quickly. Good luck.


Edit: good advice thain, but I'm not sure Smitfraud is going to go away without a really tough fight. I've read some nasty stories about that one.

 

Hmmmm, i'll probably just reformat again since nothing is on it thats important. i really want to know how that crap got on it though. it wasn't on there before the reformat, and it started acting strange almost immediately. I didn't have any security software installed until i put spybot on. i want to make sure this isn't going to happen again, but i just cant explain how this happened in the first place...
pisses me off because i'm on vacation right now, i brought it so i could play games at the airport ect, but now its totally unusable, if i'm off line its much easier to use, but no Steam.