two adware problems

Hi, I have two problems that I think are related to adware, and I'm not sure if they are related to each other. I'm going to give the whole history because I'm not sure what is important.

Lately my IE closes down frequently (maybe once or twice an hour). At first I thought it was pop-up stopper but I uninstalled it the problem has not gone away. Within the last few days when it happens and I do that whole send error report thing it tells me that the problems was caused by "SmartPops Network Essentials" and gives me a link to instructions to uninstall smartpops. Well, I can't find Smartpops on my computer anywhere, and I certainly never willingly installed it so I figure it's somekind of adware.

I ran adaware and if found a bunch of stuff. Among those was Gator, which I've been trying to unintall for quite a while now. Everytime I try I to run the Gator uninstaller I get an error that says the program is in use. And when I try to uninstall it by going to add/remove programs I can't find it on the list.

In the mean time I have removed all the things that adaware found with the exception of Gator and still my IE is closing on me.

Does anyone have any hints on either removing Gator or on smartpops? Are these things related?

Thank you

Too many ways to remove it. Depends on what's installed. Adaware from Lavasoft has always worked for me. If not do a google search for gator removal. Tons of advice there.

what you can do is tell adware to run at the next system start up. restart the computer. even before you see the desktop it will start running and it will fix them. or it should becuase it does for me

Run ad-aware while in safe mode. The problems youre still having are because the files are imbedded in the registry. After that whatlikesit12345 is correct, let it remove them during startup.

Thanks,

I followed Whatlikesit's advice and was able to get Gator off my system! yey!

Still having the problem with IE shutting down. But I've gotten a few ideas for that.

Good luck, if u still have problems post your error here.