How to remove Download-Ready pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Download-Ready pop-up notifications can appear out of the blue, covering the content of the website you explored or opening your web browser when you don’t need it to be opened.

Clicking on the Download-Ready promotion can cause the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the tutorial of Download-Ready popups clearing in a couple of ways, and also checking your PC for additional malware existence.

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What are Download-Ready pop-ups?

Download-Ready popups are an outcome of adware presence. Adware is a sort of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which creates a major volume of earnings for adware suppliers. These advertisements might have sometimes shocking material, or have a web link to malicious content/website, because adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their single target is cash.

Download-Ready push notification

Download-Ready push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a good, cheap and also very efficient advertising solution1. It makes it possible for the vendor to attach the customers’ attention to their site, as well as the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the person will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to buy is offered at the online shop he/she visited earlier with a 15% price cut, one will definitely use this chance and purchase it. Considering the exceptionally low cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising method is a much-loved thing among the advertising departments of huge online retail stores.

Nevertheless, such a rewarding plan could not be missed by malware developers. Ability to demonstrate the popup advertisements by force to the victims of malware attack is an ideal basis for evil-minded tricks with the popup advertisements. And Download-ready.com advertisements is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a details for the Download-Ready site
SiteDownload-ready.com
HostingAS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.
United States, San Francisco
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address104.21.6.106
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorTopfreearticles, Nginrespon, Youractualfeed
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Download-Ready virus?

There are a huge amount of methods of getting infected by the adware that lead to the Download-Ready popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software may additionally be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is offered as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of individuals oftentimes utilize the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, a wide range of utilities that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. All of these sorts of software are dangerous, because it is extremely easy to integrate a Download-Ready 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.

Download-Ready popup virus may additionally be concealed in the ad somewhere on the odd site. Such sites are typically filled with bright and blinking advertisements, and their owners typically permit any kind of promos to be published on their web page. For this reason, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement contractor realizes what will occur when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may also receive something far more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious ads.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Download-Ready pop-up virus may cause a variety of problems on your personal computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-ups may display you the promotions, where you are offered to download another strange program, or “a perfect anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often distributed under the last motto. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is quite hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and fake antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also chosen as a spreading method by different trojan viruses, for example – 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 tapping these advertisements, they can be clicked by someone who also makes use of your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data and money loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Download-Ready pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Download-Ready adware clearing consists of 2 sections. First, we need to get rid of the malware, and then take care of the results of its action. The elimination task is really simple, due to the fact that it may be done even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-virus tool that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, due to its substantial resources utilization, along with some errors that can be pivotal for some categories of users, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its utilization is most likely impossible. Additionally, various trojan viruses are capable to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to make use of the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

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

Removing Download-Ready 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 Download-Ready 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 make sure that your web browser will definitely be connected the accurate DNS while connecting to the website you need. Make a text file titled “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.

However, there is one problem that makes the things much more difficult to repair, especially without the anti-malware program. Most of adware variations that are used to show you the Download-Ready pop-up advertisements are modifying the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your PC was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and after that it will be back to the typical, up until you attempt 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 Download-Ready Pop-ups?

Name: Download-Ready

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