Browser Opening Pop-Ups and Ads on Its Own: How to Remove the Adware

1Revoke the sites' notification permissions

This is the number one cause of ads that appear with the browser closed, in the corner of the screen, imitating a system alert. At some point a page asked permission to send notifications and got an Allow. From then on it pushes advertising straight to the system, without going through any extension. Revoking the permission cuts the problem at the root and does not affect the sites you actually use.

1. Open the browser menu (the three dots or three lines in the top right corner) and go to Settings.
2. Search for Notifications in the settings search box. In Chromium-based browsers the option sits under Privacy and security > Site settings > Notifications.
3. Go through the list of allowed sites and remove every one you do not recognise. When in doubt, remove it: a legitimate site will ask again when you go back.
4. If the list is huge, switch the general option so sites cannot ask permission to send notifications at all.
5. Repeat in every installed browser, including the one you barely use.

2Check the Target field of the browser shortcut

If an advertising page opens at the exact moment you start the browser, and disappears when you open the browser some other way, the shortcut was modified. The trick is old and effective: the adware installer pastes an address after the program name in the Target field. The browser is clean, it is the shortcut telling it to open that page.

1. Right-click the browser shortcut, on the desktop or the taskbar, and choose Properties. On the taskbar, right-click the icon, then right-click the browser name, then Properties.
2. Look at the Target field. It should end at the program name in quotes, something like chrome.exe or msedge.exe.
3. If there is anything after the closing quote, especially a web address, delete only that part and leave the program path untouched.
4. Click Apply and OK. If Windows asks for administrator permission, confirm.
5. Repeat for every browser shortcut you have: desktop, taskbar and Start menu are usually separate shortcuts.

3Disable suspicious scheduled tasks

When the ads return at the same interval, or reappear days after you uninstalled the program, there is a scheduled task bringing it all back. That is the mechanism that makes adware look immortal: you clean it up, it returns on its own the next day.

1. Open the Start menu, type Task Scheduler and open the program.
2. In the left pane, click Task Scheduler Library to see the main list.
3. Sort by name and look for entries with meaningless names, random letter sequences, or names imitating well-known updaters.
4. Click each suspect and look at the Actions tab at the bottom: it shows which program or address the task runs. A web address or a file inside a temporary folder is a clear adware sign.
5. Right-click the task and choose Disable rather than Delete. If something stops working, you can re-enable it. If all is well after a week, then delete it.

4Clean up Windows startup

The program opening advertising tabs has to be running. Almost always it registers itself to start with Windows, which is why the ads begin a few minutes after you switch the computer on, even without opening the browser.

1. Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Task Manager.
2. Go to the startup apps tab.
3. Look at the publisher column. Items with no publisher listed deserve attention.
4. Right-click the suspect item and choose Open file location before disabling it: if the file sits in a temporary or downloads folder, it is almost certainly adware.
5. Disable the suspects, restart the computer and see whether the ads stopped.

5Uninstall programs installed on the date it all started

Adware usually hitches a ride on free software installers, the ones with several 'Next' screens and a pre-ticked box somewhere in the middle. Sorting the list by install date makes the culprit stand out on its own, because it arrived the same day as the problem.

1. Open Settings > Apps > Installed apps.
2. Change the sorting to install date, newest first.
3. Compare with the date the ads started and uninstall anything you do not recognise and did not install on purpose.
4. If the name means nothing to you, look it up before removing: some oddly named components belong to your graphics or chipset driver and should not be uninstalled.
5. Restart after uninstalling, because part of the adware only goes away completely on reboot.

6Check whether the browser is under a managed policy

If the browser shows a notice saying it is managed by your organisation, and the computer does not belong to a company, an installer applied a policy to lock the home page and the search engine. While that policy exists, any setting you change reverts to the imposed value.

1. Open the browser settings and look at the bottom of the page for the notice about management by an organisation.
2. In Chromium-based browsers, type chrome://policy in the address bar to see which policies are applied and where they come from.
3. If there are home page or search policies you do not recognise, first uninstall the program that created them, following Solution 5.
4. Restart the computer and return to that screen to confirm the policies are gone.
5. If they persist and you cannot tell where they come from, it is time to call a technician: clearing policies means editing the Windows registry, and a mistake there can stop the system from starting.

chrome://policy

7Run a full scan with the system antivirus

Much adware is detected as a potentially unwanted program rather than a virus, so the quick scan tends to ignore it. A full scan, with the computer idle, catches the leftovers in temporary folders. Use the antivirus already built into the system or the one you already have, without downloading anything new from a doubtful source, because a fake antivirus is one of adware's favourite disguises.

1. Open the system security centre from the Start menu.
2. Go to virus and threat protection and open the scan options.
3. Pick the full scan, not the quick one, and let it run while you are not using the computer. It can take more than an hour.
4. In the protection settings, also turn on blocking of potentially unwanted apps, which is off by default in some installations.
5. When it finishes, accept the removal of whatever it found and restart.

8Reset the browser and, if needed, create a new profile

This is the last step, not the first. The reset returns the home page, search engine and permissions to their defaults and switches off extensions, but it does not touch anything outside the browser. If you do it before the earlier steps, the ads come back within hours. Your saved bookmarks and passwords are not deleted, but confirm they are synced to your account before you start.

1. In the browser settings, search for reset and choose the option to restore settings to their original defaults.
2. Confirm and restart the browser. Re-enable only the extensions you genuinely use and recognise, one at a time.
3. If the ads continue, create a new user profile in the browser and use it for a day. A clean profile with no ads confirms the problem was in the old one.
4. With the new profile working, move bookmarks and passwords across through your browser account and remove the old profile.
5. If even the new profile is not clean, the source is the system and not the browser: go back to Solutions 3, 4 and 5.