Have I Malware or Virus?

[silvery]

OK  thanks both.  good advice.

[Nick29]

 

I agree with Nick’s good advice. You can also use Alt and F4 sometimes to get rid of them.

If the pop up is a “nasty” it can have been programmed so that any part of it (including the two bits referred to by Nick) can cause problems if clicked on. Therefore, it is good advice to not touch it directly in any way but to use one of the indirect methods to get rid of it from the screen.

DS

Yes, that's why.  All too easy to make a section of a pop-up appear to do whatever you want.  You click on the red X expecting it to close, and you could well be initiating something completely different.  As you also suggested Alt-F4 closes them properly too.

[kiwihalfpint]

Thanks for the advice will put it into practice.

[meles]

Thank you for that - will do so in future. What you learn on this site... 

meles

[mshrmh]

Update - PC is booked in to be cleaned up. It it now on continuously after the last struggle to boot up took so may tries.
Incidentally - I didn't know about the way to "close" pop-ups, so thanks for that - I've always ignored them/changed to another page etc - I never click on them, but now will know how to get rid.