Preventing Popups

Running Windows 10 on 64-bit ASUS M32 PC

Short of switching to Linux, how can I suppress the popup ads that have begun appearing on the Windows desktop since the last update from Microsoft?

I'll try to catch one. They grab my attention with an audio signal but last only a few seconds. The only one that lingers is from Microsoft, warning me that the Windows Firewall is turned off, which is especially annoying because I set it that way deliberately, having a better firewall upstream.

Probs worth running a quick malware scan in the meantime, any pop up microsoft send you im sure they make sure you can see it by leaving it on the screen for eternity lol :)

Any other pop up of a similar nature is normally something dodgy.

When I touch-slidein from the right, settings is mentioned only in "All settings." Touching that gives me "Windows Settings." Touching the icons "System" / "Notifications & actions" results among many other things in the line "Get notifications from apps and other senders," whose slide switch is to the left and marked "Off." So unless this setting is meaningless, which I often suspect with recent Windows, my popups are not notifications.

On the advice of kingtez1984 I installed Avira anti-virus, which claimed to have found and "quarantined" a couple of malware programs. Since then only the following has appeared:

Thank you, kingtez1984.

Windows firewall is turned off at my choice. How do I suppress the above popup?

Glad it sorted boss :)

Clearing out the "Action Center" apparently solved everything. Thanks for all the suggestions!