Remove Achelous-xan Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Achelous-xan pop-up alerts may show up unexpectedly, covering the post of the site you explored or opening your browser when you don’t wish it to be opened.

Clicking on the Achelous-xan ad can lead to the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guide of Achelous-xan popups removal in multiple ways, and also checking your computer for other malware existence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Achelous-xan manually may take hours and may damage your PC in the process. I recommend you to download GridinSoft Anti-Malware for threats removal. Allows to complete scan and cure your PC during the trial period.

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What are Achelous-xan pop-ups?

Achelous-xan popups are a result of adware action. Adware is a kind of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which generates a substantial volume of profit for adware suppliers. These advertisements might have sometimes shocking composition, or have a web link to malicious content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is money.

Achelous-xan push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a very good, low-priced and really successful advertising method¹. It permits the vendor to attach the customers’ interest to their website, as well as the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the consumer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to purchase is offered at the online shop he/she checked out previously with a 15% discount, one will surely use this chance and get it. Taking into consideration the incredibly low price for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing method is a favourite thing among the advertising teams of big online retailers.

Nevertheless, such a rewarding scheme could not be missed by malware creators. Potential to show the popup ads forcibly to the victims of malware invasion is a great basis for malicious tricks with the popup advertisements. And Achelous-xan.com promotions is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short details for the Achelous-xan

How have I got the Achelous-xan virus?

There are a number of ways of becoming infected by the adware that result in the Achelous-xan popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware may also be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is offered as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of users often make use of the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of tools that are free, or even hacked programs. All of these sorts of programs are unsafe, due to the fact that it is extremely easy to integrate a Achelous-xan malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Achelous-xan popup malware may also be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the strange site. Such websites are typically full of colorful and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors typically approve any kind of promotions to be placed on their page. Therefore, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad provider realizes what will happen when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can additionally get something much more hazardous, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

The statistic shows that people dislike popup advertising more than other types of promotions

Potentially undesirable applications, like Achelous-xan popup virus may provoke a variety of troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-ups may present you the ads, where you are offered to download one more unknown program, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the use of the last slogun. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and fake antiviruses, popup-related ads are also exploited as a spreading method by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these advertisements, they can be clicked by someone who also makes use of your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without information loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Achelous-xan pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Achelous-xan adware clearing contains 2 parts. Initially, we need to deal with the malware, and afterwards correct the effects of its activity. The elimination task is really simple, since it can be done even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus program that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, due to its substantial resources consumption, as well as some failures that may be pivotal for some groups of individuals, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its use is probably impossible. Furthermore, a wide range of trojan viruses are able to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is better to use the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I would certainly advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven security device that will certainly exterminate the malware from your personal computer and make an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s deal with Achelous-xan adware initially.

Removing Achelous-xan popup virus with GridinSoft Anti-Malware

• Download and install GridinSoft Anti-Malware. After the installation, you will be offered to perform the Standard Scan. Approve this action.

• Standard scan checks the logical disk where the system files are stored, together with the files of programs you have already installed. The scan lasts up to 6 minutes.

• When the scan is over, you may choose the action for each detected virus. For all files of Achelous-xan malware the default option is “Delete”. Press “Apply” to finish the malware removal.

Now, when the computer is clean of viruses, we can proceed to the browser reset. You can do this step manually, as well as with the use of GridinSoft Anti-Malware.

Reset browser settings to default

Manual method of browser reset

To reset Edge, do the following steps :

1. Open “Settings and more” tab in upper right corner, then find here “Settings” button. In the appeared menu, choose “Reset settings” option :

2. After picking the Reset Settings option, you will see the following menu, stating about the settings which will be reverted to original :

For Mozilla Firefox, do the next actions :

1. Open Menu tab (three strips in upper right corner) and click the “Help” button. In the appeared menu choose “troubleshooting information” :

2. In the next screen, find the “Refresh Firefox” option :

After choosing this option, you will see the next message :

If you use Google Chrome

1. Open Settings tab, find the “Advanced” button. In the extended tab choose the “Reset and clean up” button :

2. In the appeared list, click on the “Restore settings to their original defaults” :

3. Finally, you will see the window, where you can see all the settings which will be reset to default :

Opera can be reset in the next way

1. Open Settings menu by pressing the gear icon in the toolbar (left side of the browser window), then click “Advanced” option, and choose “Browser” button in the drop-down list. Scroll down, to the bottom of the settings menu. Find there “Restore settings to their original defaults” option :


2. After clicking the “Restore settings…” button, you will see the window, where all settings, which will be reset, are shown :

When the web browsers are reset, you need to ensure that your web browser will be connected the appropriate DNS while connecting to the website you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following text³:

Find the hosts.txt file in C:/Windows/System32/drivers/etc directory. Rename this file to “hosts.old.txt” (to distinguish it from the new one), and then move the file you created on the desktop to this folder. Remove the hosts.old from this folder. Now you have your hosts file as good as new.

Nevertheless, there is one problem that makes things much harder to repair, particularly without the anti-malware program. Most of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Achelous-xan pop-up ads are modifying the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your system was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse soon. In some cases, you will see no crash, but large lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the normal, until you attempt to open settings again.

Reset your browser settings with GridinSoft Anti-Malware

To reset your browser with GridinSoft Anti-Malware, open the Tools tab, and click the “Reset browser settings” button.

You can see the list of the options for each browser. By default, they are set up in the manner which fits the majority of users. Press the “Reset” button (lower right corner). In a minute your browser will be as good as new.

The browser reset is recommended to perform through the antivirus tool by GridinSoft, because last is also able to reset the HOSTS file without any additional commands.

How to Remove Achelous-xan Pop-ups?

Name: Achelous-xan

Description: Achelous-xan - a lot of users became a target for the pop-up advertisements. I have a lot of friends who literally bombed me with the questions like “how to remove Achelous-xan.com push notifications?” or “why do Achelous-xan.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Achelous-xan pop-ups, which may corrupt your browser’s correct performance, and create a lot of troubles while you are working.

Operating System: Windows

Application Category: Adware

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1. More about pop-up advertisements on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware overview and the reasons why I recommend it for malware elimination.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.