Pop ups and viruses

hi.. since swapping my provider to virginmedia , my lappy has being swamped with pop-ups.

I haven't altered anything since using sky. here's what's happening.

when I use the internet and I click on a bookmark in my list, a new tab opens up first selling this or that. sometimes I cant close them down and the only way to get rid is to crash my lappy, hard power off.

ive tried swapping browser from chrome to internet explorer. i.e seems to recognise the popups and block them.. but clearly they're still there. I,ve increased the blocker strength to High and then I cant even access sheffiledforum..!

I've run AVG and defender, they've found nothing.. and ive cleared cookies and temp uninstalled chrome & reinstalled.. but the popups still happen.

Any advice or hints as what to try next will be appreciated.. thanks

Click on C drive > properties and run disk clean-up, then download malwarebytes free and see if that flags anything up.

Instead of hard crashing the laptop have you tried the 3 finger salute.. that is hold down Ctrl+Alt+Delete which will then bring up task manager and then close down the browser from there.

I'll give it a try. thanks. I forgot about C.A.D thanks for the reminder. I just panicked and shut down as quick as I could to stop anymore damage but I guess whats in there is already nibbling away...

---------- Post added 12-03-2017 at 13:48 ----------

Malwarebytes worked a treat. i had downloaded a prog called mp3cutter.. which had a registry attacker embedded. strange how avg and windows defender couldnt spot it.

Thanks for the heads-up