Infestation

I don't know where it came from but I spent some time last week trying to get some insidious "thing" off my computer. I'm not sure what the right term is but everytime I used Internet Explorer, closing the active window would cause a pop-up message saying the program had closed, and did I want to send an error report. A couple of pop-ups kept happening - did I want to synchronise the clock on my computer, and did I want to optimize my computer. Close the window and bingo, the program closed and wanted to send an error report. I cleaned out cookies, I cleaned out files, I looked for new, unfamiliar programs. Zilch. But finally, I found them, 5 programs downloaded on the same day last week according to the details. Not quite sure how it happened - just knew that it was when I was using the computer - and finally decided it was when I was searching for a program - clicking links off to various sites, when the system was compromised. But I thought the firewall was suppo!
sed to stop that, and surely the virus program should have kicked in at some point? Obviously I need to understand this "stuff" better - so I have a new project for the coming month. And were there really 340 instances of these investations (as the Adware program suggested). I guess so, but at least they're all safely quantined now.