wayno wrote in...
hey, i am being bombarded by popups hawking "spyware protect 2009
alert" purporting to warn me of an "infiltration alert", asking me to
click on "yes" to "block this attack", and accompanied by a "windows
security alert" that contains grammatical errors.

anybody know how to deal with this?



Sounds a lot like the Antivirus XP crap -- malwarebytes.org has a great tool
for this:

http://www.malwarebytes.org/


D/L the free version (license is a few usages), and see what happens.

Good luck

-Dan

(If all else fails, do a system restore back a week or two)