Did you just get a pop-up from s.system-update.net and wonder where it came from? Did the s.system-update.net ad appear to have been launched from a web site that under normal circumstances don’t use aggressive advertising such as pop-up windows? Or did the s.system-update.net pop-up show up while you clicked a link on one of the big search engines, such as Google, Bing or Yahoo?

Here’s a screen capture of the s.system-update.net pop-up ad when it showed up on my machine:

Don’t download the file. It’s not the real Flash Player from Adobe. The file was digitally signed by  Smooth Funnel.

Does this sound like your machine, you most likely have some adware installed on your system that pops up the s.system-update.net ads. So there’s no idea contacting the owner of the site you were browsing. The ads are not coming from them. I’ll do my best to help you remove the s.system-update.net pop-up in this blog post.

For those that are new to the blog: Some time ago I dedicated a few of my lab computers and intentionally installed a few adware programs on them. I have been following the behaviour on these machines to see what kinds of advertisements that are displayed. I’m also looking on other interesting things such as if the adware updates itself automatically, or if it downloads and installs additional unwanted software on the computers. I first spotted the s.system-update.net pop-up on one of these lab machines.

s.system-update.net was registered on 2014-12-16. s.system-update.net resolves to the 199.115.114.52 IP address.

So, how do you remove the s.system-update.net pop-up ads? On the machine where I got the s.system-update.net ads I had OfferBoulevard, Salus, SpeedCheck, PriceHorse and PriceLess installed. I removed them with FreeFixer and that stopped the s.system-update.net pop-ups and all the other ads I was getting in Firefox.

The issue with pop-ups like this one is that it can be initiated by many variants of adware, not just the adware on my computer. This makes it impossible to say exactly what you need to remove to stop the pop-ups.

Anyway, here’s my suggestion for the s.system-update.net ads removal:

The first thing I would do to remove the s.system-update.net pop-ups is to examine the programs installed on the machine, by opening the “Uninstall programs” dialog. You can find this dialog from the Windows Control Panel. If you are using one of the more recent versions of Windows OS you can just type in “uninstall” in the Control Panel’s search field to find that dialog:

Click on the “Uninstall a program” link and the Uninstall programs dialog will open up:

Do you see something suspicious listed there or something that you don’t remember installing? Tip: Sort on the “Installed On” column to see if some program was installed about the same time as you started getting the s.system-update.net pop-ups.

Then you can examine you browser add-ons. Adware often show up under the add-ons dialog in Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer or Safari. Is there anything that looks suspicious? Something that you don’t remember installing?

I think most users will be able to find and uninstall the adware with the steps outlined above, but in case that did not work you can try the FreeFixer removal tool to identify and remove the adware. FreeFixer is a freeware tool that I’ve developed since 2006. It’s a tool designed to manually track down and remove unwanted software. When you’ve found the unwanted files you can simply tick a checkbox and click on the Fix button to remove the unwanted file.

FreeFixer’s removal feature is not locked down like many other removal tools out there. It will not require you to pay for the program just when you are about to remove the unwanted files.

And if you’re having troubles determining if a file is clean or malware in FreeFixer’s scan result, click on the More Info link for the file. That will open up a web page which contains more details about the file. On that web page, check out the VirusTotal report which can be quite useful:

Here’s a video tutorial on how to remove the pop-ups with FreeFixer:

Are you a Mac or Linux user and get the s.system-update.net pop-ups? What did you do to stop the pop-up in your browser? Please share in the comments below. Thank you very much!

Did you find any adware on your machine? Did that stop the s.system-update.net ads? Please post the name of the adware you uninstalled from your machine in the comment below.

Thank you!