How to remove Cowboy2u4me.me pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Cowboy2u4me.me pop-up notices can show up unexpectedly, covering the post of the site you went to or opening your browser when you don’t need it to be opened.

Clicking on the Cowboy2u4me.me advertisement may lead to the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guideline of Cowboy2u4me.me popups clearing in a couple of ways, as well as examining your system for extra viruses presence.

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What are Cowboy2u4me.me pop-ups?

Cowboy2u4me.me popups are an effect of adware action. Adware is a type of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which creates a massive volume of profit for adware suppliers. These ads might consist of sometimes shocking information, or have a web link to malevolent content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the material they are going to show – their solitary target is cash.

Cowboy2u4me.me push notification

Cowboy2u4me.me push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a good, cheap and extremely effective marketing method1. It enables the vendor to link the customers’ attention to their website, and the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. When the customer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to buy is offered at the online shop he/she checked out earlier with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this opportunity and buy it. Considering the extremely small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing method is a favourite thing among the marketing teams of big online sellers.

However, such a profitable system could not be missed by malware developers. Ability to demonstrate the popup ads forcibly to the people of malware invasion is an excellent basis for evil-minded manipulations with the popup promotions. And Cowboy2u4me.me advertisements is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short summary for the Cowboy2u4me.me
Site Cowboy2u4me.me
Hosting AS7979 Servers.com, Inc.
Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 188.42.218.242
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Clevercaptcha, Ukndaspiratioty, Current
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Cowboy2u4me.me virus?

There are a plenty of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that trigger the Cowboy2u4me.me popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software can also be downloaded from the official web page, and the adware is supplied as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of individuals frequently utilize the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, different tools that are free, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these types of software are risky, since it is extremely simple to include a Cowboy2u4me.me malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Cowboy2u4me.me popup malware can also be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the odd site. Such sites are generally loaded with bright and blinking ads, and their proprietors typically approve any kind of promotions to be published on their web page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor realizes what will happen when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may additionally get something much more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners distribution 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 applications, like Cowboy2u4me.me popup virus may cause a wide range of different problems on your PC. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-ups may show you the banners, where you are offered to get another dubious program, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the use of the last slogun. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also used as a distribution method by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these ads, they can be clicked by someone who also makes use of your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data and money loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Cowboy2u4me.me pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Cowboy2u4me.me adware clearing consists of 2 sections. Initially, we need to exterminate the malware, and then fix the results of its action. The removal task is really easy, because it may be performed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – security software 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 crucial for some types of individuals, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. Furthermore, a variety of trojan viruses are able to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d advise you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware device that will undoubtedly exterminate the viruses from your personal computer and make an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection function. But let’s take care of Cowboy2u4me.me adware initially.

Removing Cowboy2u4me.me 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 Cowboy2u4me.me 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 ensure that your browser will definitely connect the accurate DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Make a text file named “hosts” on your computer’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.

Nonetheless, there is one issue that makes things much more difficult to restore, specifically without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware versions that are used to show you the Cowboy2u4me.me pop-up ads are altering the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your machine was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and then it will be back to the normal, until you try to open settings once more.

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 Cowboy2u4me.me Pop-ups?

Name: Cowboy2u4me.me

Description: Cowboy2u4me.me - 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 Cowboy2u4me.me push notifications?” or “why do Cowboy2u4me.me pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Cowboy2u4me.me 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 review and also the reasons why I recommend 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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