Remove Advtlife Virus — How to Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Advtlife pop-up notifications can appear unexpectedly, covering the content of the website you went to or opening your web browser when you do not wish it to be opened.

Clicking on the Advtlife promotion may trigger the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guideline of Advtlife popups clearing in several manners, as well as examining your computer for other malware presence.

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What are Advtlife pop-ups?

Advtlife popups are a result of adware action. Adware is a type of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which creates a major volume of earnings for adware distributors. These promotions might consist of sometimes shocking material, or have a web link to harmful content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is cash.

Advtlife push notification

Advtlife push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is an excellent, low-priced and also really efficient marketing instrument1. It enables the seller to link the customers’ interest to their site, as well as the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the customer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to buy is provided at the online shop he/she saw previously with a 15% price cut, one will definitely use this opportunity and purchase it. Considering the extremely low price for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing method is a favorite thing amidst the marketing teams of large internet retailers.

However, such a rewarding scheme could not be missed by virus developers. Potential to demonstrate the popup ads forcibly to the people of malware attack is a great basis for evil-minded tricks with the popup ads. And Advtlife.com promotions is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short summary for the Advtlife site
SiteAdvtlife.com
HostingAS14618 Amazon.com, Inc.
United States, Ashburn
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address52.0.170.221
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorSystem, Alliedowlagator, Advtreviews
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Advtlife virus?

There are a number of methods of getting contaminated by the adware that result in the Advtlife popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware can likewise be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is offered as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of individuals oftentimes make use of the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various tools that are free, or even hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of applications are unsafe, because it is extremely easy to include a Advtlife 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.

Advtlife popup malware can also be concealed in the ad somewhere on the odd web page. Such sites are usually packed with intense and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors often accept any kind of promos to be posted on their web page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement provider realizes what will happen when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may additionally receive something a lot more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious ads.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially unwanted programs, like Advtlife pop-up virus may cause a lot of problems on your personal computer. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-ups may show you the advertisements, where you are offered to get another unknown application, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often spread under the last slogun. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related ads are also chosen as a spreading way by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these banners, they may be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data and money loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Advtlife pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Advtlife adware elimination consists of 2 sections. First, we need to eliminate the malware, and then deal with the results of its activity. The elimination process is pretty simple, due to the fact that it can be done even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-malware software that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, because of its large resources utilization, as well as some bugs that may be pivotal for some categories of individuals, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. What’s more, a wide range of trojan viruses have the ability to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is better to use the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I’d suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security device that will undoubtedly wipe out the viruses from your system and also make an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s handle Advtlife adware initially.

Removing Advtlife 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.
  • Gridinsoft Anti-Malware during the scan process

  • 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.
  • GridinSoft Anti-Malware scan results

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

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. Reseting the Edge browser

  3. 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. The first step to revert Mozilla Firefox

  3. In the next screen, find the “Refresh Firefox” option :
  4. The second step of Firefox restoration
    After choosing this option, you will see the next message :
    The last step for Firefox
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 connect the correct DNS while connecting to the website you want. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following content3:

# Copyright (c) 1993-2006 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a ‘#’ symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host
# localhost name resolution is handle within DNS itself.
# 127.0.0.1 localhost
# ::1 localhost

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.

However, there is one issue that makes things much more difficult to restore, especially without the anti-malware software. Most of adware variants that are used to show you the Advtlife 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 PC was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the typical, until you try to open settings one more time.

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.

Tools tab in GridinSoft Anti-Malware

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.

Reset Browser Settings tab in GridinSoft Anti-Malware

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 Advtlife Pop-ups?

Name: Advtlife

Description: Advtlife - 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 Advtlife.com push notifications?” or “why do Advtlife.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Advtlife 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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References

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

About the author

Wilbur Woodham

I was a technical writer from early in my career, and consider IT Security one of my foundational skills. I’m sharing my experience here, and I hope you find it useful.

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