Challenging Security Problem

Hello, I have something in my computer that is preventing me from connecting to some security related sites and is also preventing me from running hijackthis. Even on your own forum, if I try clicking on anything related to hijackthis or to virus/trojan cleaning, I get kicked back to the desktop. I used to have McAfee privacy service. It is now missing some application component and won't run but I can't even connect to their site. If I try typing www.mcafee.com directly into my IE bar I get kicked directly back to the desktop. If I try to googlesearch to get to mcafee, then I get there but as soon as I try to log in, I get kicked back to the desktop. I have hijack on my machine and have used it successfully on two occasions in the past (thanks to Wilders and Gladiator). Now though, I cannot get it to run. I downloaded hijack this from work, re-named it and stored it on a disk. I still cannot get it to run. It seems like there is some nasty program on my machine that is preventing me from contacting certain security site and from using hijackthis. Some anti-spyware/virus programs do still work like Ad-Aware, Spy-Bot, TDS-3, & Spyware Subtractor. Others like AVG and mcafee do not and I can't even connect to their sites. Ever heard of anything like this before ? Thanks, Ron

It sounds like you have a popup blocker on a "Strict" setting, which would block every link if not crash your browser to the desktop. I run EMS Free Surfer mk II always set to a strict setting, but I also have My Popup Killer, which will block the entire browser as well as crash links to the desktop. I found it's best to disable or just turn off My Popup Killer in favor of Free Surfer.