Originally posted here by Wazz
Check your Host file...(Do a search in Windows (assuming that's what you're running), and open the file with Notepad. If there are any IP Addresses listed at the bottom of the text other that the loopback, delete them (unless you added them yourself). This is a common solution that AdAware and similar proggies miss. Hope this helps.......
Hrm...... I'm going to have to question this... Deleting entries in your hosts file is an adware solution? This is the first time I've heard of that. There are virii/spyware/adware out there that modify this file, however they actually edit the registry entry on where the file is stored and create a new file located elsewhere on the drive that is now referenced as the hosts file. You would have to find the new location in your registry and edit the hosts file in that location not the default file, also this is for a very small number of pieces of malware, in these cases you will find your nameservers have been changed and common pages -- google being a big on are being redirected. The hosts file is actually a very useful file and I would never tell someone to just go delete all the entires other than the loopback. This file stores local, for lack of a better term, dns entries. It allows you to add references for your LAN so you can refer to them by name rather than by address (yes you can use computer name, but this allows for other names, more logical ones), also it allows you to save yourself some bandwidth. For a home computer this might not be a thing, however if you have 5000 computers and they're all hitting your DNS server because the users use the name instead of the IP, you could easily push out a hosts file to all the systems with the set-up for some of the more commonly used ones. It is also a way to restrict the websites that a user visits. You can, in a cheesy way, block access to certain domains. You can also use it as a defence against pop-ups and built in ads, Spybot does a great job of updating this file to stop ads and pop-ups. However saying just aimlessly go in and delete all but your loopback entry is just bad advice.

Samueltoon:

As for your problem I'd suggest you check out www.safer-networking.org - Spybot S&D tends to usually be a bit ahead of AdAware and find a few more problems.