How to turn off audio of background audio ads in Internet Explorer 7

My friend has a Dell Optiplex system. He is using Windows XP on the same. Recently due to some virus infection he called to check the system. I installed Spybot and cleaned the system. There is a antimalware. On scanning there were few infections, but later on nothing was detected. So it looks that the virus is clean. But a new problem appeared. When the system starts up there is a sound. I checked in Task Manager and found iexplorer.exe as running which is consuming quiet high cpu and ram. What I know that iexplorer is for Internet Explorer. If I terminate the same the audio goes, but the system freezes. How can I stop this thing. I am having no clue about this infection.

There would be some kind of malware in your system. That is why you are getting that audio on load. I will recommend you to use Malwarebytes Anti-malware or SuperAntiSpyware. I am using them and they are recommended as best for malware cleaning. It is a kind of good antivirus solution for this kind of issues. Just install them and update your system. Go in Safe Mode and scan your system properly. I am sure this will be able to find the infections and wipe it out.

There is one thing that you can try. Download and install Hijackthis in your system. Hijackthis is not a kind of antivirus but a log file generator. It is a scanner type thing which find information on each service or application working in your system. Also it will give you the exact location from where it is running. In this way if you locate any suspicious file you can simply delete that. It is recommended that you delete that in Safe Mode under Admin account. Because in normal mode you might not get access denied error.

There are some online scanners that can help you to fix the problem. One of them is F-Secure. I am found it really very helpful. My existing antivirus was not detecting anything. I found F-Secure online scanner which located more than 100 infections in my system. There are series of online antivirus scanner which are capable of giving you powerful result on scanned items. You can on that basis go for proper solution.

Simply download and install Malwarebytes Antimalware in your system. This is one of the best tool that I had seen. I am quiet happy to use this. You can install this with your existing antivirus also. It is capable of giving you complete protections for series of malware. For that audio thing there are might be something loaded at the startup. You have to check that in msconfig. Go to startup and see what you can find there. I am sure there is some kind of audio service which is causing issue.

I think re-installing the browser can fix the problem. If you see iexplorer.exe in task manager then it looks the malware is running with the web browser. It has somehow associated itself with it. You can try checking with antimalware tool, but as it is not a complete solution. You have to somehow locate the service which is causing the issue. There are number of powerful and free applications that you can try out for your system to find this kind of things.

Disable these add ons in internet explorer and firefox
fixed my problem

Name adHlpr Object
Publisher Control name is not available
Status Disabled
File date Tuesday, December 22, 2009, 8:07 PM
Version 1.2.0.0
Load time (0.02 s)

Name adShotHlpr Object
Publisher Control name is not available
Status Disabled
File date Tuesday, December 22, 2009, 8:07 PM
Version 1.2.0.0
Load time (0.01 s)

Name bignetdaddy search enhancer
Publisher Control name is not available
Status Disabled
File date Wednesday, September 09, 2009, 6:09 PM
Version 3.0.3.9
Load time (0.01 s)

Name Search panel
Publisher Control name is not available
Status Disabled
File date Wednesday, September 09, 2009, 6:09 PM
Version 3.0.3.9
Load time (0.01 s)

Thank you, thank you, thank you svogeler!

I'd tried adware programs and anti-virus programs and nothing worked. After reading your post, I went to "Tools" on my Internet Explorer (problem doesn't happen on Firefox), then "Manage Add-ons" and disabled the add-on that had the most recent date..2 days before the problem started. That fixed it! No more annoying ads!

It wasn't any of the ones you listed. It was:

Name Shockwave Flash Object
Publisher Adobe Systems Incorporated
Status Disabled
File date February-15-11, 12:33 AM
Version 10.2.152.26

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

This was happening on chrome as well.

I went to chrome://extensions and nothing was listed so I pulled up my task manager and watched the processes as the commercials were playing and saw an instance of chrome.exe that increased to 45 every time the commercials played. I stopped the process and at the same time I received a notice that 'shockwave has crashed' so yes this is part of the problem, but I need shockwave for the internet so now i just need to find the actual culprit that is using shockwave...

just disabling shockwave doesn't remove the actual problem... i will post more when I find out what this is.... im running malware bytes and superantispyware at the moment and im waiting for the results.

Yes that is an malware. Because the ads are not displayed on your screen. The activex is always related to malware attacks. Many time while loading any site you get an message to update your ActiveX component. And they provide you link for the same. It recommended to go on the official website and manual download active x component. Do not follow any link for the same. Second you can use malwarebyte to scan your system.