How to remove Popular123.com [Chrome, Firefox, IE, Edge]

As mentioned above, the Popular123.com hijacker also alters the web browser’s search provider. So, your internet browser, when searching something, will show a hodgepodge of ads, links to unwanted and ad sites and search results from the big search engines such as Google or Bing. As a result, actual use of a internet browser’s search becomes uncomfortable. Moreover, it may also lead to slowing or even freeze your web-browser.

Some hijackers also contain adware (sometimes called ‘ad-supported’ software) which can be used to open intrusive ads and or gather a wide variety of personal info that can be used for marketing purposes. These unwanted ads can be shown in the form of pop-unders, pop-ups, in-text ads, video advertisements, text links or banners or even massive full page ads. Most of the adware is developed to display ads, but some ‘ad supported’ software is form of spyware that often used to track users to collect a wide variety of user data.

Therefore it is very important to clean your system of browser hijacker infection ASAP. Follow the tutorial below to get rid of Popular123.com home page, as well as other malware and ad-supported software, which can be installed onto your computer along with it.

Remove Popular123.com search

There exist several free browser hijacker infection removal utilities. Also it is possible to delete Popular123.com home page manually. But we recommend to combine all these ways below into the one removal algorithm. Follow the steps of the instructions. Read it once, after doing so, please print this page as you may need to close your internet browser or restart your PC system.

How to remove Popular123.com redirect without any software

The instructions will help you get rid of Popular123.com home page. These Popular123.com removal steps work for the Chrome, Firefox, IE and MS Edge, as well as every version of MS Windows operating system.

Delete all adware and other potentially unwanted applications through the MS Windows Control Panel

First method for manual browser hijacker removal is to go into the Microsoft Windows “Control Panel”, then “Uninstall a program” console. Take a look at the list of programs on your PC system and see if there are any suspicious and unknown applications. If you see any, you need to uninstall them. Of course, before doing so, you can do an Net search to find details on the application. If it is a potentially unwanted program, ‘ad supported’ software or malicious software, you will likely find information that says so.

It will display the Windows Control Panel like below.

Next, click “Uninstall a program”
It will display a list of all programs installed on your PC. Scroll through the all list, and remove any suspicious and unknown programs. To quickly find the latest installed software, we recommend sort programs by date in the Control panel.

Fix web browser shortcuts, altered by Popular123.com hijacker infection

A browser hijacker can hijack various Windows shortcuts on your desktop (most often, all browsers shortcuts), so in this step you need to check and clean them by removing the argument like http://site.address/.

Right click to a desktop shortcut for your internet browser. Choose the “Properties” option. It will open the Properties window. Select the “Shortcut” tab here, after that, look at the “Target” field. The browser hijacker can modify it. If you are seeing something such as “…exe http://site.address” then you need to remove “http…” and leave only, depending on the browser you are using:

• Google Chrome: chrome.exe
• Opera: opera.exe
• Firefox: firefox.exe
• Internet Explorer: iexplore.exe

Look at the example as shown below.

Once is complete, click the “OK” button to save the changes. Please repeat this step for internet browser shortcuts which redirects to an undesired web pages. When you have completed, go to next step.

Remove Popular123.com home page from Chrome

If your Chrome web-browser is rerouted to annoying Popular123.com page, it may be necessary to completely reset your web-browser program to its default settings.

Open the Chrome menu by clicking on the button in the form of three horizontal stripes (). It will open the drop-down menu. Next, click to “Settings” option.

Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the “Show advanced settings” link. Now scroll down until the Reset settings section is visible, as shown on the screen below and press the “Reset settings” button.

Confirm your action, click the “Reset” button.

Get rid of Popular123.com from Firefox by resetting internet browser settings

Start the FF and press the menu button (it looks like three stacked lines) at the top right of the web browser screen. Next, press the question-mark icon at the bottom of the drop-down menu. It will display the slide-out menu.

Select the “Troubleshooting information”. If you’re unable to access the Help menu, then type “about:support” in your address bar and press Enter. It bring up the “Troubleshooting Information” page as shown on the image below.

Click the “Refresh Firefox” button at the top right of the Troubleshooting Information page. Select “Refresh Firefox” in the confirmation prompt. The Firefox will begin a process to fix your problems that caused by the Popular123.com browser hijacker. Once, it’s complete, press the “Finish” button.

Remove Popular123.com from IE

If you find that Microsoft Internet Explorer internet browser settings like startpage, newtab page and search engine by default having been hijacked, then you may revert back your settings, via the reset web browser procedure.

First, open the Internet Explorer, click ) button. Next, click “Internet Options” as shown on the screen below.

In the “Internet Options” screen select the Advanced tab. Next, click Reset button. The Microsoft Internet Explorer will open the Reset Internet Explorer settings prompt. Select the “Delete personal settings” check box and click Reset button.

You will now need to restart your machine for the changes to take effect. It will remove Popular123.com browser hijacker, disable malicious and ad-supported internet browser’s extensions and restore the Internet Explorer’s settings such as home page, newtab and default search provider to default state.

Scan your PC and get rid of Popular123.com with free utilities

Many antivirus companies have made software that help detect and delete browser hijacker, and thereby revert back web-browsers settings. Below is a a few of the free programs you may want to use. Your PC may have a huge number of potentially unwanted applications, adware and browser hijackers installed at the same time, so we suggest, if any unwanted or harmful program returns after rebooting the personal computer, then start your PC into Safe Mode and use the anti-malware utility again.

How to automatically get rid of Popular123.com with Zemana Anti-malware

We recommend using the Zemana Anti-malware which are completely clean your computer of the hijacker. The tool is an advanced malicious software removal program designed by (c) Zemana lab. It is able to help you get rid of potentially unwanted software, hijackers, adware, malware, toolbars, ransomware and other security threats from your system for free.

1. Download Zemana anti malware (ZAM) from the link below.
   
   

   Zemana AntiMalware
   164108 downloads
   Author: Zemana Ltd
   Category: Security tools
   Update: July 16, 2019
   
2. When downloading is finished, close all applications and windows on your personal computer. Open a folder in which you saved it. Double-click on the icon that’s named Zemana.AntiMalware.Setup.
3. Further, press Next button and follow the prompts.
4. Once setup is finished, click the “Scan” button for scanning your computer for the browser hijacker infection that redirects your web browser to the Popular123.com annoying web page. A scan may take anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes, depending on the count of files on your system and the speed of your machine. While the tool is scanning, you may see number of objects and files has already scanned.
5. As the scanning ends, it’ll show a scan report. Next, you need to press “Next”. Once disinfection is done, you can be prompted to reboot your system.

Scan and clean your computer of browser hijacker infection with Malwarebytes

Delete Popular123.com browser hijacker infection manually is difficult and often the browser hijacker infection is not completely removed. Therefore, we recommend you to run the Malwarebytes Free which are completely clean your PC. Moreover, the free program will help you to delete malware, PUPs, toolbars and ad supported software that your computer may be infected too.

Download Malwarebytes Free on your machine from the link below. Save it on your desktop.

After the download is done, close all windows on your computer. Further, start the file named mb3-setup. If the “User Account Control” dialog box pops up as shown below, click the “Yes” button.

It will open the “Setup wizard” that will help you install Malwarebytes on the machine. Follow the prompts and do not make any changes to default settings.

Once setup is done successfully, click Finish button. Then Malwarebytes will automatically launch and you can see its main window as on the image below.

Next, click the “Scan Now” button . This will begin scanning the whole PC to find out browser hijacker infection and other malicious software and ‘ad supported’ software. Depending on your computer, the scan can take anywhere from a few minutes to close to an hour. While the application is checking, you can see how many objects it has identified as threat.

As the scanning ends, it’ll open a scan report. Make sure all entries have ‘checkmark’ and press “Quarantine Selected” button.

The Malwarebytes will begin removing Popular123.com hijacker infection and other security threats. Once disinfection is finished, you can be prompted to restart your computer. We recommend you look at the following video, which completely explains the procedure of using the Malwarebytes to get rid of hijacker, ‘ad supported’ software and other malware.

Remove Popular123.com search from web-browsers with AdwCleaner

AdwCleaner is a free removal utility that can be downloaded and run to remove hijackers, ad-supported software, malicious software, potentially unwanted applications, toolbars and other threats from your personal computer. You can use this utility to find threats even if you have an antivirus or any other security application.

1. Download AdwCleaner by clicking on the following link.
   
   

   AdwCleaner download
   225298 downloads
   Version: 8.4.1
   Author: Xplode, MalwareBytes
   Category: Security tools
   Update: October 5, 2024
   
2. Select the directory in which you saved it as Desktop, and then click Save.
3. Once the download is finished, start the AdwCleaner, double-click the adwcleaner_xxx.exe file.
4. If the “User Account Control” prompts, click Yes to continue.
5. Read the “Terms of use”, and click Accept.
6. In the AdwCleaner window, press the “Scan” to start scanning your computer for the Popular123.com browser hijacker and other malicious software and ad-supported software. This procedure can take quite a while, so please be patient. When a malware, ad-supported software or PUPs are found, the number of the security threats will change accordingly. Wait until the the checking is finished.
7. Once the scan is finished, the results are displayed in the scan report. Review the scan results and then click “Clean”. If the AdwCleaner will ask you to reboot your system, press “OK”.

The step by step tutorial shown in detail in the following video.

Stop Popular123.com and other intrusive web-pages

By installing an ad-blocker program such as AdbGuard, you are able to stop Popular123.com, autoplaying video ads and remove lots of distracting and annoying ads on web pages.

Download AdGuard program from the following link.

When the download is complete, run the downloaded file. You will see the “Setup Wizard” screen as shown on the screen below.

Follow the prompts. When the setup is finished, you will see a window as shown on the image below.

You can press “Skip” to close the setup program and use the default settings, or click “Get Started” button to see an quick tutorial that will help you get to know AdGuard better.

In most cases, the default settings are enough and you don’t need to change anything. Each time, when you start your PC, AdGuard will run automatically and stop popups, sites such Popular123.com, as well as other harmful or misleading web-pages. For an overview of all the features of the program, or to change its settings you can simply double-click on the AdGuard icon, which is located on your desktop.

Prevent Popular123.com browser hijacker from installing

The Popular123.com hijacker actively distributed with free applications, in the composition, together with the installer of these programs. Therefore, it is very important, when installing an unknown program even downloaded from known or big hosting web page, read the Terms of use and the Software license, as well as to select the Manual, Advanced or Custom installation mode. In this mode, you can disable the installation of unneeded modules and software and protect your computer from such hijackers as the Popular123.com. Unfortunately, most users when installing unknown software, simply press the Next button, and do not read any information which the free applications show them during its install. This leads to the fact that the web browser settings are replaced and web-browser’s start page, newtab page and default search engine set to Popular123.com.

To sum up

Once you have done the guide outlined above, your system should be free from browser hijacker, ad supported software and malware. The Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox and Edge will no longer show Popular123.com intrusive start page on startup. Unfortunately, if the instructions does not help you, then you have caught a new browser hijacker, and then the best way – ask for help in our Spyware/Malware removal forum.