efusco,
I'm far from the best guy for computer advice, but nobody else seems to be stepping up. All kinds of hardware and software combinations exist, so general advice always has limits.
Adware and malware can eventually shut you down. If you have a browser that prevents them, it's probably unwise to change to one that doesn't.
Some sort of anti-virus software is not a bad idea. I'm clueless about the choices. I'm prejudiced against McAfee, but without any supporting evidence. I use free AVG because it's the first one I stumbled onto. I don't know enough to recommend or disparage it.
Google has a good reputation for effective pop-up blockers. Some programs require disabling the pop-up blocker. Chrome has severely annoyed a lot of users by making it difficult to figure out how to do so. To enable or disable, this will probably work:
Click on the wrench icon in the upper right hand corner.
Select Options; Under the hood; Change proxy settings; Privacy; then check or uncheck Turn on pop-up blocker.
You probably noticed that you can enable / disable cookies along the way. Contributing to this site required me to enable cookies, which would have been helpful to have been made aware of.
For computer problems in general, I use Google advanced search, searching for the text of error messages, or using any other way I can manage to describe the problem I'm having. I don't have any expertise or knowledge in the field to fall back on.
Now you know as much as I do about this stuff. Good luck!