Did you just get a pop-up from servingspot.com and wonder where it came from? Did the servingspot.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 servingspot.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 servingspot.com ad looked like on my machine:

(I know, lots of watermarks. Have to do it to stop the copy-cats.)

If you also see this on your computer, you presumably have some adware installed on your system that pops up the servingspot.com ads. So there’s no use contacting the site owner. The ads are not coming from them. I’ll do my best to help you with the servingspot.com removal in this blog post.

I found the servingspot.com pop-up on one of the lab computers where I have some adware running. I’ve talked about this in some of the previous blog posts. The adware was installed on purpose, and from time to time I check if something new has appeared, such as pop-up windows, new tabs in the browsers, injected ads on web site that usually don’t show ads, or if some new files have been saved to the hard-drive.

servingspot.com was registered on 2014-10-26.

So, how do you remove the servingspot.com pop-up ads? On the machine where I got the servingspot.com ads I had TinyWallet, BlockAndSurf and BrowserWarden installed. I removed them with FreeFixer and that stopped the servingspot.com pop-ups and all the other ads I was getting in Mozilla Firefox.

It seems as servingspot.com is getting quite a lot of traffic, based on Alexa’s traffic rank:

The problem with this type of pop-up 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 remove the servingspot.com 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:

The first thing I would do to remove the servingspot.com pop-ups is to examine the programs 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 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 shady listed there or something that you don’t remember installing? Tip: Sort on the “Installed On” column to see if some program was installed approximately about the same time as you started seeing the servingspot.com pop-ups.

The next thing to check would be your browser’s add-ons. Adware often show up under the add-ons dialog in Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer or Safari. Is there something 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 started develop many years ago. 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 a fee just when you are about to remove the unwanted files.

And if you’re having issues deciding if a file is safe or malware in the FreeFixer scan report, click on the More Info link for the file. That will open up a web page which contains additional details about the file. On that web page, check out the VirusTotal report which can be very useful:

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

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

Thank you!

Update 2015-02-22: The servingspot.com ads are still popping up:

Does this sound like what you are seeing right now? You see pop-up ads from kongregate.com appearing in new tabs while browsing at sites that usually don’t advertise with pop-ups. The pop-ups manage to escape the built-in pop-up blockers in Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer or Safari. Perhaps the kongregate.com pop-ups show up when clicking search results from Google? Or does the pop-ups show up even when you’re not browsing?

Here is how the kongregate.com ad looked like on my system:

Does this sound like your computer, you almost certainly have some adware installed on your system that pops up the kongregate.com ads. So there’s no idea contacting the owner of the web site you currently were browsing. The ads are not coming from them. I’ll do my best to help you with the kongregate.com removal in this blog post.

Those that have been reading this blog already know this, but for new visitors: Recently I dedicated a few of my lab computers and intentionally installed some adware programs on them. Since then I have been monitoring 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 auto-updates, or if it downloads additional unwanted software on the machines. I first observed the kongregate.com pop-up on one of these lab machines.

So, how do you remove the kongregate.com pop-up ads? On the machine where I got the kongregate.com ads I had GamesDesktop, MedPlayerNewVersion, Movie Wizard and istartsurf installed. I removed them with FreeFixer and that stopped the kongregate.com pop-ups and all the other ads I was getting in Mozilla Firefox.

The problem with this type of pop-up is that it can be popped up by many variants of adware. This makes it impossible to say exactly what you need to remove to stop the pop-ups.

Anyway, here’s my suggestion for the kongregate.com ads removal:

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 review 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 didn’t 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:

   

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

Thank you!