Hiya all,

Once again I am back with a strange computer anomaly that I could use some guidance on. Since Scott 'FORCED' me (lol) to format my computer and I now have Windows 7 I have noticed some strange things. One of the main ones that is bothering me is that I'm getting cookie popups from Firefox when I'm not browsing.

I have Firefox only being used when this happens and I have usually 2 sites open, Delicious bookmarks and CoffeeCup. This never happened before in Windows XP so I'm assuming it's something with Windows 7 but I've searched for 3 days now and can't find a thing on it.

Cookie requests from websites I've been to previously just pop up out of no where. They are not usually spyware cookies at all, but very legitimate ones including those from the various accounts I have for my webserver, so the cookies are valid and not a problem as to who they are from. The wierdness doesn't stop there...

Not only do they just pop up out of nowhere, but right over anything I'm doing. If I have my HTML Editor or Shopping Cart Creator, or messengers or whatever it is, it just pops that cookie request right in my face lol. And... if I don't happen to answer it fast enough or click something on my screen simultaneously and not notice it, or if I happen to step away from my computer for a bit, I can come back to see a handful of cookie requests sitting on my task bar waiting.

I have recently just set my Firefox browser to ask me for "all" cookies as I've been trying to weed out the jerks that constantly put their spyware on my computer, and that's working great for the most part, I have had nothing show up in a scan for a week now, interesting concept for just a little bit of clicking that you can control so much more. I used to do it this way for many years and for some reason got away from it. Anyways, I'm pretty sure it's because of that setting that it's giving me so many cookie requests so that's not a problem, I just can't figure out where they are coming from when I'm not surfing at all and the browser is just sitting on the CC forums page and my main bookmarks page for Delicious.com.

Any suggestions here would be appreciated. Although it's not a "problem" persay, it sure is an annoyance and even annoyances.org couldn't help me lol.

Other than that, the only issues I've been having are that some of the settings won't take effect, like the annoying task bar previews that get in my way constantly. I've followed all the ways to turn it off and it is disabled, but still happens lol, irritating to say the least.

So which is it? You're either browsing or you aren't.

I'm pretty sure cookies can't install syware. Simply viewing the site is enough to execute malicious code on your computer, regardless if cookies are enabled or not.

yeah I don't think anything "suspicious" is happening here since the cookies aren't from anywhere strange at all. But I'm not really browsing at all, my browser is open though with CC's forum site page and Delicious bookmarks page open but that's it. The browser is minimized to my system tray via an addon and I'm doing nothing, or the browser is sitting on the taskbar while I download something or watch a video or work on websites or whatever. Not "actively" browsing would be I guess the way to say it. Cookie requests just pop up out of no where lol.

I would tend to check my PC for viruses for something like this. It sounds like you may have software/virus that's stuffing your system. Cookie manipulation wouldn't be happening on sites like delicious or CC because these sites work EXTREMELY hard to earn trust. Typically you will find cookies from Ebay and Amazon if this is happening. Have you checked to see the types of cookies you have on your system?

add:(big add),..also check your firefox browser extensions/add-ons, especially from a untrusted(small or not-common) source.

Yeah I've checked all those things James, I'm not using any software or addons for browsers that I wasn't using with Windows XP just a few short weeks ago and never had this problem. I've checked for viruses and spyware using both PCTools and Malwarebytes and nothing has been found at all. System seems to run ok for the most part, just a few quirks is all. Checked all the cookies, nothing there that shouldn't be. I have all cookies asking for permissions so nothing gets added that I don't want to and I've checked to be sure nothing has been and so far so good there. I run NoScript on Firefox browser which is my default browser, I hardly ever open IE8 at all or any other browser for that matter. Using same exact Addons as I did before for FF too.

It has also stopped popping up out of the blue, not sure if that is just because it's added all the cookies I usually have added already or if whatever it was is gone or what I dunno lol. It does still pop the cookie requests outside the browser if I open a site and then minimize it to get to email or something. If it's still loading the site and it needs to save a cookie that popup will come up in front of whatever I'm doing outside of the browser window. But the random popup cookie requests have stopped at this time... or stalled for a while not sure which lol.