I had this same problem and found the cure to the SpyAxe popup
activity! I tried SpyBot Search and Destroy and Ad-aware, I have
Mcaffee Internet Security Suite and it didn't do anything, and that
always catches viruses, and I used various other programs virtually all
of the top of the line tools, but nothing fixed the problem.
SpyAxe states that they have been getting a lot of complaints about
illegal affiliates infecting computers with Trojans forcing people to
by their product in order to remove the Trojan that's advertising their
product. SpyAxe is a ligament company I guess, but there are some evil
affiliates that will do anything to get commission from these
legitimate companies, such as SpyAxe, so they create these annoying
Trojans like this to force people to buy things, basically holding your
computer hostage.

SpyAxe has provided a simple fix that removes these types of Trojans
for free and believe it or not it really works. Here are the
instructions:
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In order to clean your PC from infections related to Spyware Axe
product, please follow the instructions below:

1) Save the "Uninstallers.zip" program from
http://www.spyaxe.com/uninstall/uninstallers.zip to your desktop or
HDD. (I was a
little hesitant to do this at first, but I did it anyways because I
tried everything else and it REALLY did remove the program from
my computer, so don't worry this REALLY works. Really!)

2) Extract the file "illegal_adv_uninstall1.exe" to your desktop or
your HDD using WinZip.

3) Execute the program by double-clicking with your mouse. Nothing
special happens when you run the program (you don't even see it run)
and you'll think nothing ran, but just Reboot your PC and you will
notice that your PC is now clean.

I was just about to re-install XP and then I found this in a forum at
sillydog.org, and it really just did work.