A pop-up every few seconds, alternating between a McAfee warning that my license has expired, a Norton claim that my computer has five viruses, a Windows warning that my computer has five viruses, and a warning that Russia is controlling my computer remotely. All the little pop-ups have various buttons to push and little "x"is that supposedly close the boxes. Yes, I know not to click on any of them. The only virus protection I actually have, Defender, can’t find jack.
What is my next step?
Is it a Windows computer?
I ask because my MiL frequently gets similar symptoms on her Mac.
Is Windows 11.
Do the pop-ups continue if the browser is stopped?
Do they persist between reboots?
Yes, and yes.
I have very little experience yet with Windows 11, but I was under the impression that the built-in Windows Defender was pretty good. It may be that McAfee, expired or not, was preventing Defender from activating.
I don’t trust McAfee and the first thing I did on the new W11 laptop was uninstall it and made sure Defender was active. You should do that too. If you have sufficient functionality on this machine to download and install stuff, and Defender can’t find or can’t fix any viruses, I’d suggest the free version of Avast and running a full scan with that. If you can get it downloaded and working with all these popups happening, it’s actually a pretty good AV The free version periodically nags you to buy the paid version, but it’s quite functional.
I never had McAfee or Norton on this computer.
Then where are these warnings coming from? Are you saying they’re just an artifact of virus activity? Many new computers, notably Dells, come with a trial version of McAfee installed.
I just reinstalled a previous version and, so far, no pop-ups.
Can you wipe the whole thing and start over? Delete all your settings and files and have it redownload Windows from the cloud and reinstall itself:
You’ll lose everything on your computer though, so hopefully you have it all backed up.
If you don’t want something that drastic, you can try this:
- Use the Norton uninstaller to remove Norton, even if you don’t think you have it (it’s possible it was secretly bundled with some other app you installed)
- Use the McAfee uninstaller to remove McAfee
- Try a MalwareBytes scan
Then, make sure to add uBlock Origin/Lite to all your web browsers, and remove all the other extensions in them that you don’t use, especially if you don’t know where they came from.
But it’s safer to just wipe the whole drive and start from scratch…
Apparently, these pop-ups are fake McAfee/Norton/Windows/Russiabot warnings trying to get me to click on anything in that pop-up. Lying jerks have this tendency to, well, lie about who they really are.
Neither one is installed on this computer. Period.
It’s entirely possible, but that anything is able to show you that many pop-ups is not a good sign, especially after a reboot.
Apparently, a complete reset wasn’t necessary. The reinstall from a previous version might have done the trick.
The reinstall of what? You mean you rolled Windows back to an earlier recovery point?
I assume this means you installed a recent backup of your computer? If so, and if this indicates that you had contracted a virus of some kind between the backup and when these messages started (sorry to dwell on the obvious, I do it so you can point out where I’ve gone wrong) then I would consider getting a more robust anti-virus software than Defender. I’ve been using Malwarebytes and I have been satisfied with that, for my moderate computer use (on Windows 10 still).
Yes, that is what I meant. Sorry.
Great, glad that fixed it for now.
An adblocker is still a very good idea if you don’t already have one. Specifically uBlock Origin Lite (or regular/full if you use Firefox). They’re not just for ads, but will block a lot of malware and such too and help prevent re-infection.
Did you double-check the installed programs? McAfee is very commonly bundled with a new OS, but it’s indeed strange that they would both be there.
I would (a) make sure that Defender is running, and (b) consider installing the free version of Avast, even if just temporarily, and running a full scan with it. Malwarebytes is good, too, but I think it covers a somewhat different spectrum of malware. Wouldn’t hurt to do a full scan with both to make sure that there’s nothing still lingering.
If this is happening when browsing the web, it’s a rogue popup and there is no virus. The fix is simple in Window:
- Press Ctrl-Shift-Esc to bring up the task manager
- Find all instances of your web browser. Highlight them and press End Task.
- When you bring up your browser again, you will get a warning that it has closed unexpectedly and it will ask if you want to bring up the old tabs. Do not do this, or you’ll get the same problem again.
That usually fixes it.