Remove Cookoval Pop-up Ads — How to Fix Gude

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Cookoval pop-up notices can appear unexpectedly, covering the content of the website you went to or opening your browser when you don’t desire it to be opened.

Clicking on the Cookoval promotion may result in the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the tutorial of Cookoval popups removal in multiple ways, and also checking your personal computer for other malware presence.

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What are Cookoval pop-ups?

Cookoval popups are an outcome of adware presence. Adware is a type of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which creates a significant volume of profit for adware representatives. These promotions might have explicit information, or have a link to malicious content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the material they are going to show – their single target is cash.

Cookoval push notification

Cookoval push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a very good, affordable and really efficient marketing instrument1. It enables the vendor to attach the buyers’ attention to their site, as well as the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the person will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to purchase is offered at the online shop he/she checked out previously with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this chance and purchase it. Considering the extremely low price for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing tool is a much-loved thing amidst the advertising teams of big online retailers.

Nonetheless, such a successful plan could not be missed by virus developers. Ability to demonstrate the popup advertisements by force to the people of malware attack is a perfect basis for malicious manipulations with the popup advertisements. And Cookoval.com advertisements is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a summary for the Cookoval
SiteCookoval.com
HostingAS50245 Serverel Inc.
Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address62.122.171.6
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorLastwise, Us, Mfcewkrob
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Cookoval virus?

There are a plenty of ways of becoming infected by the adware that create the Cookoval popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware can additionally be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is presented as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of people often use the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different tools that are free, or perhaps hacked programs. All of these types of programs are risky, because it is extremely easy to build in a Cookoval 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.

Cookoval popup malware can additionally be concealed in the advertisement somewhere on the odd site. Such websites are generally loaded with bright and blinking ads, and their proprietors typically approve any kind of promos to be posted on their web page. Therefore, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement contractor knows what will occur when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may likewise receive something far more threatening, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable programs, like Cookoval pop-up virus can initiate a variety of problems on your PC. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-up notifications can show you the ads, where you are offered to get one more strange application, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the use of the last slogun. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related ads are also exploited as a spreading way by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these promotions, they may be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without information loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

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

The guide of Cookoval adware elimination contains 2 sections. First, we need to get rid of the malware, and afterwards fix the results of its action. The elimination process is quite easy, since it may be performed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus tool that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, because of its significant resources utilization, along with some failures that can be critical for some categories of users, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its utilization is probably impossible. What’s more, a wide range of trojan viruses are able to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I would certainly recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security device that will certainly erase the viruses from your personal computer and also create an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection function. But let’s take care of Cookoval adware initially.

Removing Cookoval 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 Cookoval 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 browsers are reset, you need to make sure that your web browser will definitely connect the accurate DNS while connecting to the website you need. Create a text file named “hosts” on your desktop, then open it and fill it with the following text3:

# 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 problem that makes the things much harder to fix, specifically without the anti-malware software. A lot of adware variations that are used to show you the Cookoval pop-up advertisements are changing the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your system was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and after that it will be back to the typical, till you attempt 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 Cookoval Pop-ups?

Name: Cookoval

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