Did you just get a pop-up from softnewready.freeupgrade24.com and wonder where it came from? Did the freeupgrade24.com 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 softnewready.freeupgrade24.com pop-up show up while you clicked a link on one of the big search engines, such as Google, Bing or Yahoo?

Here is how the softnewready.freeupgrade24.com ad looked like on my machine:

If you also see this on your system, you apparently have some adware installed on your machine that pops up the softnewready.freeupgrade24.com ads. Contacting the owner of the site would be a waste of time. They are not responsible for the ads. I’ll do my best to help you remove the softnewready.freeupgrade24.com pop-up in this blog post.

Those that have been reading this blog already know this, but for new visitors: Not long ago I dedicated some of my lab machines and knowingly installed a few adware programs on them. I’ve been observing the actions 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 machines. I first spotted the softnewready.freeupgrade24.com pop-up on one of these lab machines.

softnewready.freeupgrade24.com was created on 2015-01-26. softnewready.freeupgrade24.com resolves to 198.7.56.112.

So, how do you remove the softnewready.freeupgrade24.com pop-up ads? On the machine where I got the softnewready.freeupgrade24.com ads I had PriceHorse, PriceLess, OfferBoulevard and SpeedCheck installed. I removed them with FreeFixer and that stopped the softnewready.freeupgrade24.com pop-ups and all the other ads I was getting in Mozilla Firefox.

The issue with this type of pop-up is that it can be launched 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 softnewready.freeupgrade24.com ads removal:

The first thing I would do to remove the softnewready.freeupgrade24.com pop-ups is to examine the software installed on the machine, by opening the “Uninstall programs” dialog. You can open this dialog from the Windows Control Panel. If you are using one of the more recent versions of Windows 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 in there or something that you don’t remember installing? Tip: Sort on the “Installed On” column to see if something was installed about the same time as you started seeing the softnewready.freeupgrade24.com pop-ups.

Then I would check the browser add-ons. Adware often appear under the add-ons menu in Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer or Safari. Is there anything that looks suspicious? Something that you don’t remember installing?

I think you will be able to find and remove 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 find and uninstall unwanted software. When you’ve identified 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 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 difficulties determining if a file is clean or malware in the FreeFixer 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 very useful:

Here you can see FreeFixer in action removing pop-up ads:

Did this blog post help you to remove the softnewready.freeupgrade24.com pop-up ads? Please let me know or how I can improve this blog post.

Thank you!

Sound familiar? You see pop-up ads from pcchecker.plugin-update.org while browsing sites that in general don’t advertise in pop-up windows. The pop-ups manage to bypass the built-in pop-up blockers in Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer or Safari. Maybe the pcchecker.plugin-update.org pop-ups show up when clicking search results from Google? Or does the pop-ups appear even when you’re not browsing?

Here’s a screen capture of the plugin-update.org pop-up ad when it showed up on my computer:

Does this sound like what you see your computer, you almost certainly have some adware installed on your system that pops up the pcchecker.plugin-update.org ads. So don’t flame the people that runs the website you were at, the ads are presumably not coming from that website, but from the adware that’s installed on your machine. I’ll try help you to remove the plugin-update.org pop-ups in this blog post.

If you have been reading this blog already know this, but if you are new: A little while back I dedicated some of my lab computers and intentionally installed a few adware programs on them. Since then I have been tracking the behaviour on these computers to see what kinds of advertisements that are displayed. I’m also looking on other interesting things such as if the adware auto-updates, or if it installs additional unwanted software on the computers. I first noticed the pcchecker.plugin-update.org pop-up on one of these lab computers.

pcchecker.plugin-update.org resolves to 198.7.56.118. pcchecker.plugin-update.org was created on 2015-01-20.

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

The issue with pop-ups such as this one is that it can be initiated by many variants of adware. This makes it impossible to say exactly what you need to remove to stop the pop-ups.

So, what can be done to solve the problem? To remove the pcchecker.plugin-update.org pop-up ads you need to review your machine for adware or other types of unwanted software and uninstall it. Here’s my suggested removal procedure:

1. What software do you have installed if you look in the Add/Remove programs dialog in the Windows Control Panel? Something that you don’t remember installing yourself or that was recently installed?
2. You can also check the add-ons that you have in your browser. Same thing here, do you see something that you don’t remember installing?
3. If that did not help, I’d recommend a scan with FreeFixer to manually track down the adware. FreeFixer is a freeware tool that I’m working on that scans your computer at lots of locations, such as browser add-ons, processes, Windows services, recently modified files, etc. If you want to get additional details about a file in the scan result, you can click the More Info link for that file and a web page will open up with a VirusTotal report which will be very useful to determine if the file is safe or malware:

   

Here’s a video guide showing how to remove pop-up ads with FreeFixer:

Did this blog post help you to remove the pcchecker.plugin-update.org pop-up ads? Please let me know or how I can improve this blog post.

Thank you!