Remove Dwayn.live Virus — How to Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Dwayn.live pop-up notifications may appear out of the blue, covering the subject of the page you explored or opening your web browser when you do not want it to be opened.

Clicking the Dwayn.live ad may lead to the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guideline of Dwayn.live popups clearing in a couple of manners, as well as examining your computer for additional malware existence.

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What are Dwayn.live pop-ups?

Dwayn.live popups are an effect of adware action. Adware is a type of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a large volume of earnings for adware suppliers. These advertisements might contain sometimes shocking information, or have a web link to malevolent content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the web content they are going to show – their single target is money.

Dwayn.live push notification

Dwayn.live push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a good, low-priced and very successful marketing tool1. It makes it possible for the vendor to link the customers’ interest to their site, as well as the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the person will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to purchase is offered at the online store he/she saw previously with a 15% price cut, one will definitely use this opportunity and purchase it. Considering the extremely low price for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing instrument is a favorite thing amidst the marketing teams of huge online stores.

However, such a rewarding scheme could not be missed by virus creators. Ability to show the popup advertisements by force to the people of malware invasion is an ideal basis for evil-minded adjustments with the popup advertisements. And Dwayn.live ads is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a details for the Dwayn.live site
SiteDwayn.live
HostingAS14061 DigitalOcean, LLC
United States, North Bergen
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address159.223.153.123
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorLuckypapa, Eduratsu, Dweandthep
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Dwayn.live virus?

There are a huge amount of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that trigger the Dwayn.live popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware may additionally be downloaded from the main site, and the adware is offered as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of users frequently work with the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, various utilities that are free, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of software are risky, since it is extremely simple to build in a Dwayn.live malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Dwayn.live popup malware can also be concealed in the advertisement somewhere on the strange site. Such websites are typically filled with bright and blinking ads, and their proprietors typically accept any kind of promotions to be posted on their web page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement contractor knows what will happen when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may additionally receive something far more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious ads.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially unwanted applications, like Dwayn.live popup virus can cause a lot of troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-ups may present you the promotions, where you are offered to download one more dubious program, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the last slogun. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, can 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 potentially unwanted programs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also exploited as a distribution method by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these advertisements, they can be clicked by someone who also uses your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without information loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Dwayn.live pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Dwayn.live adware removal contains 2 sections. Initially, we need to get rid of the malware, and after that repair the consequences of its activity. The removal task is very simple, because it can be performed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware tool that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. However, due to its large resources utilization, along with some errors that may be serious for some kinds of users, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. In addition, a wide range of trojan viruses have the ability to disable the embedded antivirus. It is far better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I would certainly recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security device that will definitely wipe out the malware from your computer and create an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s manage Dwayn.live adware initially.

Removing Dwayn.live 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 Dwayn.live 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 web browser will definitely connect the right DNS while connecting to the website you need. Create a text file titled “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 a lot harder to restore, specifically without the anti-malware software. Most of adware variations that are used to show you the Dwayn.live pop-up promotions are modifying the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your machine was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the normal, till 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.

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 Dwayn.live Pop-ups?

Name: Dwayn.live

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