Remove Adware from Windows 11 — The Complete Guide

Check whether your “ads” are just Windows 11 being Windows 11 before you scan for anything. Microsoft scattered promotional features across at least eight settings pages. Open Settings, Privacy & Security, General — turn off “Show me suggested content in the Settings app.” Then Personalization, Start — turn off “Show recommendations for tips, shortcuts, new apps, and more.” Then Personalization, Lock Screen — switch from “Windows Spotlight” to “Picture” if you want a clean lock screen. Then System, Notifications — uncheck “Get tips and suggestions when using Windows” and “Suggest ways to get the most out of Windows.” Restart. If the ads stop, you never had adware. You had Windows 11.

A freelance photographer messaged us convinced she had a virus because pop-ups kept appearing — OneDrive storage notifications, Start menu app suggestions, a “personalized recommendations” section in Settings that felt invasive. She’d already downloaded three “antivirus” tools from Google ads to fix it. All three turned out to be adware themselves — pop-up generators, browser extension injectors, a toolbar she couldn’t remove. Her original “ads” were just Microsoft’s built-in promotional features. But the three tools she installed in a panic were absolutely malware. Her real infection started when she tried to fix her non-existent infection.

About 40% of the adware infections we clean started exactly like that — someone installed a fake “antivirus” or “ad blocker” from a Google ad, and the cure became the disease.

Browser Extensions and Notifications

Browser-based adware accounts for about 72% of consumer “malware” detections according to Malwarebytes’ 2025 report. Most of it isn’t something a system scanner will find — it’s browser extensions and notification permissions you have to clean up manually.

Open chrome://extensions (edge://extensions for Edge, about:addons for Firefox). Review every extension. If you didn’t intentionally install it, remove it. Don’t just disable it. Extensions with names like “Quick Search,” “Web Results,” “Page Optimizer,” “Shopping Helper” from unknown developers are almost always adware.

Then clean notification permissions — chrome://settings/content/notifications. Look through the “Allowed to send notifications” list. If you see domains you don’t recognize — anything that isn’t Gmail, Slack, or a site you deliberately enabled — click the three dots and Block or Remove. Notification spam accounts for a huge percentage of what people call “pop-up ads” and it persists through browser restarts, computer restarts, even browser reinstalls because the permission is tied to your browser profile. Our fake virus warning guide covers the full notification scam diagnostic. For the per-browser walkthrough on shutting them down for good, see how to stop pop-up ads on Windows 11.

After cleaning extensions and notifications, reset Chrome: Settings, Reset Settings, “Restore settings to their original defaults.” This clears any remaining configuration changes a rogue extension made to your homepage or search engine. Bookmarks and passwords survive. If your search engine got hijacked — redirecting searches to Yahoo or some random engine — our browser hijacker removal guide covers the Chrome policy cleanup.

Uninstall Suspicious Programs

Open Settings, Apps, Installed apps. Sort by “Date installed.” Look at everything installed in the past 30-60 days, especially programs you don’t remember installing. Adware programs often have names that sound vaguely legitimate but come from unknown publishers — “PC Optimizer Pro,” “Driver Updater,” “Web Companion,” or anything with “Search” or “Coupon” from a publisher like Mindspark, Ask, Conduit, or SuperWeb.

For programs that won’t uninstall through Settings, try the Control Panel uninstaller instead. If that also fails, Revo Uninstaller Free forcibly removes programs and cleans up registry entries they leave behind. Our guide on checking if your computer has a virus covers the Task Manager diagnostic that helps identify which running processes belong to adware.

Scanning

I need to emphasize this: when you search “free antivirus” on Google, several of the top results — including paid ads — are themselves adware distributors disguised as security software. TotalAV, PC Protect, Restoro, Reimage — they use aggressive pop-up scare tactics and generate more ads than whatever they claim to remove.

Use two scanners, both from established companies. Windows Defender first — it’s already on your computer and Microsoft’s detection database has gotten genuinely good at catching adware as of 2025. Settings, Privacy & Security, Windows Security, Virus & threat protection, Scan options, Full scan. Takes 30-90 minutes.

Then Malwarebytes Free — download from malwarebytes.com directly, not from a Google ad. Malwarebytes is specifically excellent at catching PUPs and adware that Defender sometimes classifies as “not quite malware” because the user technically installed it. The free version handles one-time scanning and removal. Run a full system scan.

If both scanners come up clean but you’re still seeing ads, the problem is almost certainly browser-side — go back to extensions and notifications. Browser-based adware doesn’t install system files, so system scanners won’t find it.

For prevention: install uBlock Origin in your browser (free, open-source, blocks malvertising and deceptive download buttons), download software only from official sites or Ninite.com (third-party download sites like Softonic and download.com bundle PUPs into their custom installers), and turn off browser notification requests entirely in Chrome settings to prevent notification spam from ever getting permission. Our malware removal guide covers the deeper cleanup when adware is mixed with actual malware, and we can go through extensions, notifications, installed programs, and browser policies in one pass remotely in about twenty minutes.