How to remove Cooolio pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Cooolio pop-up notifications can show up unexpectedly, covering the post of the page you visited or opening your browser when you don’t desire it to be opened.

Clicking the Cooolio advertisement can result in the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guideline of Cooolio popups clearing in several methods, and also checking your PC for other malware existence.

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What are Cooolio pop-ups?

Quick reference

So, what is the most important point in choosing a live music streaming service, and how should you make the most of it?

One might ask, “What about video streaming?” A typical music streaming is one where no client is watching to ensure that their music is in the best taste and with only one person recording (or making a special kind of record), but also a subscription to watch their music live (which is much less expensive to maintain). One might suggest “just follow the money,” or “just follow the music!”

This may sound counterintuitive, right? But if you’re a customer that is not interested in a live digital system or online streaming services with no paid subscriber and are worried about a subscription or a monthly fee, then the first step to be taken is to see if there is a better opportunity on the market.

Cooolio popups are an outcome of adware activity. Adware is a type of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which generates a substantial volume of earnings for adware representatives. These promotions may consist of sometimes shocking composition, or have a link to malicious content/website, since adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

Cooolio push notification

Cooolio push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is an excellent, low-cost and really effective marketing tool1. It enables the seller to attach the buyers’ attention to their website, as well as the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the consumer will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he likes to purchase is available at the online store he/she checked out earlier with a 15% discount, one will surely use this chance and purchase it. Taking into consideration the exceptionally small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing tool is a favourite thing amidst the advertising departments of huge online retail stores.

However, such a successful scheme could not be missed by virus creators. Option to demonstrate the popup ads forcibly to the victims of malware invasion is a great basis for malicious manipulations with the popup ads. And Cooolio.biz ads is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short details for the Cooolio site
Site Cooolio.biz
Hosting AS14061 DigitalOcean, LLC
Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 178.62.225.201
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Ne03, Captcharesolver, Sitedirector
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Cooolio virus?

There are a number of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that create the Cooolio popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software can likewise be downloaded from the official web page, and the adware is provided as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of individuals frequently work with the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, different apps that are free, or even hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of applications are unsafe, because it is quite easy to build in a Cooolio malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Cooolio popup virus may likewise be hidden in the advertisement somewhere on the unusual web page. Such websites are usually filled with colorful and blinking ads, and their proprietors typically accept any type of promotions to be posted on their page. For this reason, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement provider realizes what will occur when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can likewise receive something far more hazardous, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious promotions.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable programs, like Cooolio popup virus can cause a wide range of different troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-ups may display you the promotions, where you are offered to download one more strange program, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the use of the last slogun. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also used as a distribution way by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these ads, they may be clicked by whoever who also uses your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data and money loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

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

The guide of Cooolio adware removal consists of 2 parts. Initially, we need to exterminate the malware, and afterwards deal with the effects of its activity. The removal procedure is really simple, due to the fact that it may be performed even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-malware software that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, as a result of its significant resources usage, along with some errors that may be critical for some kinds of users, Defender is oftentimes disabled by the users, so its use is probably impossible. In addition, various trojan viruses are capable to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I would certainly advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus tool that will surely exterminate the malware from your personal computer and make an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection function. But let’s manage Cooolio adware first.

Removing Cooolio 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 Cooolio 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 browser will connect the right DNS while connecting to the site you need. Create a text file named “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following lines3:

# 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.

Nonetheless, there is one problem that makes the things a lot more difficult to fix, especially without the anti-malware software. The majority of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Cooolio pop-up advertisements are adjusting the deep browser setups, 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 certainly collapse soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but significant lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and afterwards it will be back to the normal, up until 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 Cooolio Pop-ups?

Name: Cooolio

Description: Cooolio - 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 Cooolio.biz push notifications?” or “why do Cooolio.biz pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Cooolio 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 ads on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and the reasons why I advise 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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