I'm getting dangerous popups

AdvancedSetup · Wednesday at 6:18 PM

If you'd like free, dedicated professional one-on-one help scanning and cleaning the computer, I'd recommend following the advice here

note: I am an employee of Malwarebytes and forum Admin.

HeavyHemi · Wednesday at 6:19 PM

Dragon Drop said:
I'm not sure what to do now. I seem to have gotten rid of "McAfee LiveSafe", but the other McAfee program -- "PC Optimizer" is still there. It appears in the System Tray, and in Task Manager. But it doesn't show up in the Start menu, or in the "Settings" screen, or in "Programs and Features", or anywhere else under "Control Panel". I found its folder, "C:\Program Files\McAfee\PC Optimizer", containing two "exe" files ("PCOptimizer.exe" and "SSTray.exe"). But I'm afraid that just deleting the folder itself might not solve the problem, or might even make it worse. I managed to get those two programs into the start menu by using "pin to start", but when I try to un-install them from the start menu it just takes me to the "Settings > Installed Apps" screen. And those two apps still don't show up on that screen, so I can't un-install them.

https://www.mcafee.com/support/s/article/000001616?language=en_US

Instructions on how to remove their products.

neldog · Wednesday at 6:54 PM

Just to make sure - are you looking for it in Programs and Features as "PC Optimizer"? That is how it will be displayed if there. If not displayed there:

Step 1: Reconstruct the Uninstaller

1. Go to your McAfee Account Dashboard and download the McAfee PC Optimizer installer again.

2. Run the installer file. This will force Windows to rewrite the missing uninstallation strings and register the program in your software list.

3. Once the installation completes, ****do not open the app***. Instead, restart your PC.

4. Go back to Programs and Features (or Settings > Apps > Installed Apps). PC Optimizer should now be visible and can be cleanly uninstalled.

Helmut · Wednesday at 6:56 PM

Dragon Drop said:
I've now deleted the Cookies, Cache, temp files, etc. and turned off Notifications. I'm not seeing the popups at the moment, but who knows what will happen?

Well, good and remember the procedures it will happen again sometime in the future, simple once you know.

Dragon Drop said:
OK –– I've now deleted the Cookies, Cache, temp files, etc. and turned off Notifications. I'm not seeing the popups at the moment, but who knows what will happen? I also installed MalwareBytes and it didn’t show any problems when I did a scan.

This morning I un–installed McAfee. But now that I think about it –– This computer came with McAfee pre–installed. And that was several years ago, so I doubt if my McAfee software itself was to blame.

But the "McAfee PC Optimizer" is still there, along with its "Notification Service". I can't find any way to uninstall those. They show up in the System Tray area, and in Task Manager, but not in the Start Menu or Control Panel.

Optimiser is just useless go faster Bloatware, taking up resources, get rid of it.
McAfee will have uninstall instructions.

Seems to be the MCPR.exe tool

https://www.mcafee.com/support/s/article/000001616?language=en_US

Also look in Windows security > Notifications.

Settings > Personalisation > Taskbar > Other system tray icons > search for McAfee items and toggle off.

Dragon Drop said:
I found its folder, "C:\Program Files\McAfee\PC Optimizer", containing two "exe" files ("PCOptimizer.exe" and "SSTray.exe"

Then Delete those EXEs and the McAfee folder.

Post #23 is another way of uninstalling.

OldMainframeGuy · Wednesday at 8:07 PM

It's funny (sort of); millions of years ago when I was installing desktop PCs on a Banyan VINES LAN (10 points if you ever heard of Banyan VINES) McAfee had a free DOS-based version of their AV software that we used to clean-up virus messes. We used it all the time. Today, McAfee is the virus and for some reason I can't explain, the e-mail spammers and phishers always want you to think you've just renewed your McAfee license for $499.95. You'd think they'd use another AV product once in awhile just to throw you off.

Malwarebytes Browser Guard (it's free) is a good second-line-of-defense extension to keep you from shooting yourself in the foot.

AdvancedSetup · Wednesday at 8:36 PM

UNIX System V about the same time, but we were using Novell Netware and yes, had a floppy disk of McAfee to disinfect systems back then.

dacrone · Wednesday at 11:00 PM

If it’s only related to edge, uninstall it, reboot and reinstall it.

OldMainframeGuy · 2026-07-09T08:53:09-0400

AdvancedSetup said:
UNIX System V about the same time, but we were using Novell Netware and yes, had a floppy disk of McAfee to disinfect systems back then.

At the time we were running Windows 3.1 desktops connected to our mainframe via Token Ring (hey, someone had to do it); their main mission was to run 3270 emulation software and Solitaire. I remember how ungodly expensive IBM's Token Ring adapters were (I think in the order of $600 apiece). Anyway, we decided to dip our toes into the new (to us) world of LANs and did a bit of research. NetWare would have been the obvious choice if you only considered market share; Microsoft LAN Manager wasn't even considered, and then there was Banyan VINES. VINES was highly regarded because of its StreetTalk directory system and we liked the fact that it was used by government agencies because of its security features. We attended some vendor conferences and found that the Novell people were quite snarky and did a lot of trash talking of the competition rather than extolling the virtues of their own product. We ended up implementing VINES; didn't do anything too sophisticated with it, and eventually migrated over to Windows servers and Active Directory, all while converting the Token Ring network to Ethernet. It was a lot of work and lo and behold, the company where this all happened no longer exists. There's a message in there somewhere I think.

AdvancedSetup · 2026-07-09T13:28:46-0400

I had the last Enterprise company I was working at went out of business. Was a fun job for the 13 years it lasted.

AdvancedSetup · 2026-07-09T21:15:05-0400

OldMainframeGuy said:
At the time

At about that time you also had this song come out. - seems I relate to it more now than I did back then. LOL

jimbo45 · 2026-07-10T03:55:08-0400

OldMainframeGuy said:
At the time we were running Windows 3.1 desktops connected to our mainframe via Token Ring (hey, someone had to do it); their main mission was to run 3270 emulation software and Solitaire. I remember how ungodly expensive IBM's Token Ring adapters were (I think in the order of $600 apiece). Anyway, we decided to dip our toes into the new (to us) world of LANs and did a bit of research. NetWare would have been the obvious choice if you only considered market share; Microsoft LAN Manager wasn't even considered, and then there was Banyan VINES. VINES was highly regarded because of its StreetTalk directory system and we liked the fact that it was used by government agencies because of its security features. We attended some vendor conferences and found that the Novell people were quite snarky and did a lot of trash talking of the competition rather than extolling the virtues of their own product. We ended up implementing VINES; didn't do anything too sophisticated with it, and eventually migrated over to Windows servers and Active Directory, all while converting the Token Ring network to Ethernet. It was a lot of work and lo and behold, the company where this all happened no longer exists. There's a message in there somewhere I think.

You can get old memories of IBM's MVS-SP mainframe OS by running the HERCULES emulator on a laptop. Great fun entering old Mainframe Console and JES2 commands on a laptop and seeing the old block character routine (IEFSD095) on the separation pages of the spooled output.

works fine - even on a relatively modest laptop - you can run on Linux or Windows or even on VM's of these systems. !!

Run your own mainframe using Hercules mainframe emulator and MVS 3.8j tk4

Have you ever been interested in how mainframes work and how to develop software on them? Well a lot of very smart people have developed…

bradricorigg.medium.com

Cheers
jimbo

Dwarfr66 · 2026-07-10T04:04:04-0400

Did you try Revo Uninstaller like suggested?

Dragon Drop · 2026-07-10T05:06:09-0400

I ran the Safety Scanner, deleted my cache and cookies, and used Revo to un-install McAfee LiveSafe. All that was not sufficient to stop the popups. They finally stopped when I disabled all notifications. Then I manually deleted the PC Optimizer since I couldn't get rid of it any other way. And now I have Malwarebytes installed. I'm just crossing my fingers and hoping that these problems are over.

I'm getting dangerous popups

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