[mr breeze]

thanks for the help. i'm over the denial part as of yesterday. i guess you guys need a bigger hammer to get my attention.

i had defender turned off and for some reason my firewall was off (probaby because i was using that machine to share some torrents.)
i ran both mcaffee and defender on that infected machine and they both came back and said i was okay, but those infernal popups persisted, albeit at a slower pace.
i haven't checked today as yet.

Joujoujou: do i need to turn off my antivirus programs on the infected machine before i try the kaspersky rescue? i guess i will find out from them...?

i used your link and it sez that kaspersky freebie is unavailable to USA users (i may have subscribed to them once upon a time but not presently).
guess i'll get over to mcafee and see what i can do. i think i've been through this before... but not on that machine, its my newest one