Did you just get interrupted by a pop-up ad or new tab from sls.top-codec.com claiming that your version of Flash Player might be outdated? You are not alone. I also get the sls.top-codec.com pop-ups while browsing. Do the pop-ups also sidestep the pop-up blocker in Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer or Safari. Then read on…
Here is a screen capture on the sls.top-codec.com pop-up from my machine:
If this description sounds like your story, you most likely have some adware installed on your machine that pops up the sls.top-codec.com ads. Contacting the site owner would be a waste of time. The ads are not coming from them. I’ll do my best to help you remove the sls.top-codec.com pop-up in this blog post.
If you get this pop-up, do not download the “Flash Player”. It’s fake. The download is signed by OOO Gross Mauntin.
For those that are new to the blog: Some time ago I dedicated a few of my lab machines and wilfully installed some adware programs on them. Since then I’ve been following the actions on these systems to see what kinds of advertisements that are displayed. I’m also looking on other interesting things such as if the adware updates itself, or if it downloads and installs additional unwanted software on the computers. I first found the sls.top-codec.com pop-up on one of these lab machines.
sls.top-codec.com resolves to the 198.7.56.108 IP address. sls.top-codec.com was registered on 2014-12-12.
So, how do you remove the sls.top-codec.com pop-up ads? On the machine where I got the sls.top-codec.com ads I had OfferBoulevard, PriceHorse, Lampy Lighty, PriceLess and SpeedCheck installed. I removed them with FreeFixer and that stopped the sls.top-codec.com pop-ups and all the other ads I was getting in Mozilla Firefox.
The issue 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 sls.top-codec.com pop-up ads you need to review your computer 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 sls.top-codec.com pop-ups is to examine the software 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 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 strange-looking listed there or something that you don’t remember installing? Tip: Sort on the “Installed On” column to see if something was installed about the same time as you started seeing the sls.top-codec.com pop-ups.
Then I would check the browser add-ons. Adware often appear under the add-ons menu in Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer or Safari. Is there anything that looks suspicious? Something that you don’t remember installing?
I think most users will be able to identify and uninstall 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 about 8 years ago. It’s a tool built to manually identify and remove 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 for the program just when you are about to remove the unwanted files.
And if you’re having difficulties determining if a file is clean or unwanted in FreeFixer’s scan result, click on the More Info link for the file. That will open up your browser with a page which contains additional information 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 sls.top-codec.com pop-up ads? Please let me know or how I can improve this blog post.
Thank you!