Hi all,
  Thanks for getting back to me.  I use firefox and the startpage I use is a plugin for firefox called about:bookmarkshome, it uses your bookmarks as a startpage I love it and mom does too, I don't think it's what is doing it, but the more I think about it, it just may be.  I also had installed this plugin on my laptop shortly before I started getting innundated with pop-ups.
  As far as connecting to the internet, it's always on,  cable modem, lan card, little blue "local area connection" screens in system tray at startup and always there.  Do I get pop-ups with IE?  I will never know, that would be the last program I would start on any computer, I don't want to come off as whatever, but I'm very anti-Microsoft, nuff said 'bout that.
  Strangely enough I went to Adelphia's (cable Co.'s) site and they offer a program called Zero Knowledge Freedom Suite, I tried to install it and it ended up making the computer go into a restart loop that wouldn't end, that's gone, thay also recomended housecall, tried to run that and computer locked up and rebooted. 
  I believe that there is something going on deep inside this possessed machine that is not being detected. 

  Also all updates have been done and are done automatically with windows update.
I'm not really actively seeking a solution to the problem,  I'm hoping it somehow convinces mom to give linux a shot. 

Hi Forum,
  I have been using Firefox  since 0.85 or so and have recently switched to Linux on my system.  I have installed Firefox on my mothers computer and she is also happy with it, the problem however lies in the XP setup on her system.  After "Disabling Access" to Internet Explorer and never opening it I have a never-ending supply of pop-ups in Explorer windows as soon as I access the internet.
  I've tried to teach mom how to browse wisely, but she is addicted to shopping and "Exciting" websites.  The question is how do I get rid of IE?  I've read that it is unwise to completely remove it but I can't stand it any longer.  I've killed sixteen popups so far just typing this message.  I also googled about it and thought I had hit a good article about ActiveX and removing that.  Is there any benefit to ActiveX?, What does it do? 
  I use AVG personal and that runs clean every time it runs, also using CCleaner, Xoftspy,and Starter by codestuff.  I watch open ports with Activeports by smartline and the only programs I find out of normal are something called RAS_DISP.exe that are accessing the internet, but a search of the system turn up no such file.

Any suggestions would be appreciated and SOLUTIONS are most welcome.  I've kind of steered away from an active firewall because I find the training phase might be too much for mom who is not computer savvy and gets easily frustrated with questions she doesn't know how to answer.  Thanks all and Happy New Year.

Cheapest solution I found was to buy a dvd-rw drive that came with the Roxio suite. The exact name of the program escapes me, it too was based on templates, however I found I could control whatever I wanted to do with it like embedding three 30 sec. or whatever Thumbnail-sized clips playing against a static background,  My text, buttons, borders, and layout.  Another nice feature was the ability to have it play  a clip, or a series of clips after a certain amout of idle time, then replace the menu again. 

I think it was called pm studio with ez-cd 5 or 6.  I just wiped out my windows partition after deciding to wholeheartedly switch to PCLinux OS.

Theres about 6 dvd authoring progs included with it,  all open source.  Sadly, I haven't tried them out yet (maybe a weekend project)
( I'm not spamming the message board here, just a small plug for Texstar.)