Ads by Adsalert infection - Help!

matt100

matt100

matt100

Soldato
Joined
31 Jul 2004
Posts
13,847
Location
Surrey
I appear to have a nasty adware infection that I'm really struggling to get rid of.

I think whilst uninstalling some freeware (probably a file changer like pdf to epub or something) after a few drinks I think I made a wrong move on a "do you want to install this whilst uninstalling this" riddles and now I can make this go away.

The symptoms are pretty mild, I open a page and I get a big blank pop up with no content or if I browse the random picture thread it keeps putting tiny boxes on the pics to compare them against nothing.

I've used malwarebytes, a specific adsalert removal tool, superantispyware, manual removal, I've fished around in the registry, I've removed all the extensions it added, there's no sign of anything installed now etc etc.

I can make it go away for the session I'm on but as soon as I close and reopen chrome or restart the machine it's back.

Basically my gut instinct is telling me that it's pretty much gone but there's some sort of remnants forcing the empty pop ups. It seems completely incapable of actually displaying anything I guess from a lack of much in the way of installed applications

So what do I do? I guess my options are:

1) Fully uninstall chrome and start again and see if that works
2) Switch browser to edge or firefox or something but this isn't much of an option, I use chrome everywhere else
3) Nuke it from orbit and reinstall windows 10 from fresh.. perhaps not a bad idea as I've been keeping this win 8 build going much longer than I normally would, in fact I think it may have been upgraded from 7.

Anyone heard of this one before?

Anyone beaten it?!
 
Hmm.. think I might have got it actually.. fully clean install of Chrome..

We'll see.. don't entirely trust my PC anymore which is an issue.
 
Done both several times, the bother got much less but I still get the blank ad pop ups.. or I did, up to press a whole new chrome install seems to be doing it actually.
 
check there are no addins stuck in chrome, if there are remove them, close and open it again see if they come back (some times you need to delete the chrome folder from your profile if there is nothing

from bleeping computer,
combofix.exe
adaware
Junk ware removal tool (JRT)
TDSKILLER (kaspersky tool)

then download malwarebytes

if those tools all show nothing reinstall windows!
 
Before reinstalling Windows I'd suggest creating a new user profile and copying your favourites documents and desktop across. A lot of these viruses / malware install themselves under the user profile that installed them and seem limited to this via Windows generic security. If the new profile works OK take a copy of or rename the original user folder so you have any necessary files to hand and remove the problem user profile.
 
If I get a whiff of owt like this. Out with the old and in with a brand new system. No messing.

It's the only way.
 
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