A co-worker recomended that I try to post my problem here to see if there might be anyone that could lend me a hand. For the past week I've been having a problem with an obscene amount of pop-ups on my home machine and they are to the point of driving me batty.

Some info:
I'm using Windows XP Pro - fully updated
I use IE, NS7.2, and Mozilla Firefox as my browsers.
I have to use IE for work I do at home as this is the only browser that the web applications I'm testing perform in properly. For my personal use I prefer the other two. I also have to have pop-ups enabled in IE because of the web application I'm testing for work - it relies heavily on them (I didn't design it - I'm only QAing it).
I've run AdAware and SpyBot both multiple times and each and everytime I run them they seem to find more to remove but the pop-ups don't ever go away.
I thought that perhaps they came from spyware I might have gotten while downloading Sims2 files, however my attempt at a restore (which is what someone else had suggested I try to do) was before I'd even downloaded anything, the 5th of Feb, and the problems are still present.
These are most definatly NOT Messenger pop-ups.
The pop-ups are not restricted to IE. I get them both in IE and Netscape.
As I'm having to do work on a borrowed laptop currently, my home PC is not connected to the internet - this has not stopped or even slowed the pop-ups.
The pop-ups do not appear to be for any one specific site, but are each and every one of them an ad for something or another - including but not limited to car insurance.
Running SpyBot and AdAware in Safe Mode seemed to remove the most problem files, but again did not clear the problem away completely.

Any assistance with this matter would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.