How to remove Drectsearch pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Drectsearch pop-up notices may appear unexpectedly, covering the subject of the site you checked or opening your browser when you don’t want it to be opened.

Clicking the Drectsearch advertisement may cause the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the manual of Drectsearch popups clearing in a couple of manners, as well as examining your system for extra viruses presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Drectsearch manually may take hours and may damage your PC in the process. I recommend you to download GridinSoft Anti-Malware for threats removal. Allows to complete scan and cure your PC during the trial period.

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What are Drectsearch pop-ups?

Drectsearch 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 substantial amount of revenue for adware distributors. These ads may have explicit information, or have a link to harmful content/website, because adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

Drectsearch push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a good, low-priced and extremely successful advertising tool¹. It makes it possible for the vendor to link the buyers’ attention to their site, and the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the person will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he likes to buy is available at the online store he/she saw earlier with a 15% price cut, one will certainly use this chance and purchase it. Taking into consideration the incredibly low price for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing instrument is a much-loved thing amidst the marketing teams of huge internet retail stores.

However, such a profitable strategy could not be missed by malware creators. Ability to demonstrate the popup advertisements forcibly to the victims of malware attack is an excellent basis for evil-minded manipulations with the popup advertisements. And Drectsearch.com promotions is among hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short info for the Drectsearch site

How have I got the Drectsearch virus?

There are a lot of ways of becoming contaminated by the adware that lead to the Drectsearch popups storm. A lion’s part of this virus incidents is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software can also be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is offered as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of individuals oftentimes make use of the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various utilities that are free of cost, or even hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of software are unsafe, because it is very easy to include a Drectsearch 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.

Drectsearch popup malware can additionally be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the strange site. Such websites are usually filled with colorful and blinking ads, and their owners generally accept any promos to be placed on their page. Hence, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement provider knows what will occur when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can likewise receive something far more unsafe, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious promotions.

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Drectsearch popup virus may cause a lot of problems on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications can present you the promotions, where you are offered to get another dubious program, or “a perfect security tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the last motto. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is very 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 promotions are also exploited as a distribution way by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these ads, they may be clicked by someone who also makes use of your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation 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 Drectsearch pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Drectsearch adware removal consists of 2 sections. First, we need to remove the malware, and afterwards fix the results of its activity. The removal task is quite simple, since it may be performed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus software that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, because of its substantial resources usage, as well as some errors that may be critical for some categories of individuals, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its utilization is most likely impossible. In addition, a wide range of trojan viruses have the ability to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven security device that will surely erase the viruses from your personal computer and make an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s deal with Drectsearch adware initially.

Removing Drectsearch 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.

• 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.

• When the scan is over, you may choose the action for each detected virus. For all files of Drectsearch malware the default option is “Delete”. Press “Apply” to finish the malware removal.

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. 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. In the next screen, find the “Refresh Firefox” option :

After choosing this option, you will see the next message :

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 browser will be connected the appropriate DNS while connecting to the site you need. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following content³:

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 trouble that makes the things a lot harder to restore, especially without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware variations that are used to show you the Drectsearch pop-up promotions are changing the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change 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 seconds, and after that it will be back to the typical, up until you try to open settings once again.

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.

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.

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 Drectsearch Pop-ups?

Name: Drectsearch

Description: Drectsearch - 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 Drectsearch.com push notifications?” or “why do Drectsearch.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Drectsearch 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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1. More about pop-up advertisements on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and the reasons why I recommend it for malware removal.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.