Malicious URLs!

Yes, the Avast red window pops up and at any given pop-up, it can keep pinging and pinging counting up quite a few times at any given go. Yes, they are blocked, at least some. I say some because sometimes I'll still get a full screen take over of my screen - but it will be blank, as in perhaps the site was blocked but the full-screen somehow gets through. Then I'll have to go into the task manager and kill the explorer.exe thread and all is well...for a while. These threads can be multiple at a time and up up to 50K of memory usage. If I don't kill them, then I'll get an error report pop-up over some time telling me explorer has crashed. Strange. Before I installed Avast, those full screens would in fact be anything from a screen full of newsfeeds to products now as I said, they are blocked but some still leak through, albeit blank.

I suppose I'll try the Malwarebytes and give it a go.

As you and 'wpgwpg' have stated, I'm doing the whole Malwarebytes and SUPER AntiSpyware scans. So far SUPER has found a couple Trojans that've been cleaned out, but damn if those full-screen pop-ups aren't still coming! As said before, since they have been blocked by Avast, they're coming up, "This program cannot display the webpage," but nonetheless they are still just as annoying. And I'm still getting the explorer errors/close program pop-ups also. Woo-hoo!

I guess my next step will be to do the scans in safe-mode but I guess I don't understand why that'll give any different results than what I'm getting now. Maybe it will. Mercifully.

Oh, if and when I get rid of this BS, will my system be back to its old perky self or will I have to do a complete re-install anyway?

and the reason for doing the scans in Safe Mode is that only necessary drivers and processes are usually loaded.

You might even want to download RKILL and run it from Safe Mode BEFORE running the two anti-malware utilities. RKILL is designed to shut down unnecessary and suspicious processes that don't even necessarily show up in task manager.

Here is a link that tells about it and how to use it and download it:
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/rkill/

On that page be sure you also click this link and read through it for a better understanding:
RKill - What it does and What it Doesn't - A brief introduction to the program

Now, having said that it also sounds like you might be looking as some risque sites that are known to program interminable pop-up browser windows. That is fixed by avoiding the sites and shutting down all scripting in your browser.

I'd like to think I know how all this started to infect my computer, but, I got nothin'. No risque sites, no questionable downloads, no nothin'. Fact remains, it has happened. So sad.

Turns out, it was a root-kit gumming up the works. Woo-hoo! Had to do the rkill and a ton of other stuff to get this damn thing out of the system.

All seems normal, however, my computer is now far more sluggish than it has ever been. Before this happened I was zipping along but now it takes a few seconds for the computer to respond and get to where it's going.

Disease cured but the damage remains? Any thoughts on how to get that zip back in the works? After all this BS, I'm thinking about doing a whole reinstall but would really really really prefer not having to do that.

Thoughts?