So before my comp crashed...
 

I would visit websites and such and nothing would pop up under the advertisement. It would just be a gray box or nothing at all. It was real nice.

But now that I've "restored" everything, I keep getting annoying ads like the "click this button to help george bush beat mike tyson and get a free ringtone" crap. It's not speware....I don't think. I dunno, did my firewall block something that I wasn't aware of maybe?

Basically, how do I go back to not seeing these?

If it happens while surfing the web, use Firefox or get a pop-up blocker for IE. IE's pop-up blocker doesn't do a great job at blocking pop-ups.

Firefox and Adblock (Plus) extension pretty much cut down on everything for me.