Laptop help please - web pages popping up incessantly

[The Colorado Kid]

I'm of a later generation and not great at IT-self-help at all.

My personal laptop has recently changed its behavior and random web pages (all advertising related) are popping up incessantly.

I have enabled popup blockers to my best understanding.

Hopefully there is a simple fix to shut this down?

Dell laptop
Inspiron 14 2-in-1
Windows 11 Home
Version 23H2

 

[TUGBrian]

id look to running some antivirus or antimalware scans on it based on that description.

 

[tombanjo]

undoubtedly, you have "malware" - not a virus, but unwanted behavior out of your control

Look in system tray (the little icons by the clock) See if you can move mouse each one to identify as what should be there.

Check your installed programs - go to control panel, then uninstall programs, see what is listed. Try and identify them. If you don't know what they are, google to find out.

You can try downloading (directly from the authentic site) Norton or MacAfee to scan - using a trial version.

 

[DRIless]

or download Malwarebytes, the free version should help you w/o buying anything

 

[DrQ]

You also may want to clear you browser cache and delete all your cookies, also remove any plugins you may have installed in your browser(s). If you are just using M/S Edge, you might want to download Mozilla Firefox to use as an alternative.

You may want look at the documentation to extract the Windows boot media to a USB memory stick from the disk before it gets too bad. It should be on a protected partition of the SSD.

This will allow you to totally reload the Windows O/S from a USB memory stick.

BTW - I just bought one of these to use as a sandbox to test different configurations before I make changes to my XPS 95XX system. It's a nice little system. Currently running Ubuntu 22.04 (Jellyfish)