Remove Exelator Virus — How to Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Exelator pop-up notifications can show up unexpectedly, covering the material of the website you went to or opening your web browser when you do not want it to be opened.

Clicking on the Exelator advertisement may trigger the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the manual of Exelator popups removal in several manners, and also examining your computer for extra malware existence.

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What are Exelator pop-ups?

Exelator popups are an outcome of adware activity. Adware is a type of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which creates a massive amount of profit for adware suppliers. These advertisements might have sometimes shocking content, or have a link to malicious content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the material they are going to show – their solitary target is money.

Exelator push notification

Exelator push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a very good, low-cost and extremely effective marketing instrument1. It allows the seller to link the buyers’ interest to their site, as well as the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they want to purchase. When the customer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he likes to purchase is provided at the online store he/she saw previously with a 15% price cut, one will certainly use this possibility and purchase it. Taking into consideration the exceptionally small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing method is a much-loved thing amidst the marketing teams of huge internet retailers.

Nevertheless, such a profitable strategy could not be missed by malware developers. Ability to show the popup ads forcibly to the people of malware invasion is an ideal basis for evil-minded manipulations with the popup promotions. And Loadm.exelator.com ads is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short summary for the Exelator site
Site Loadm.exelator.com
Hosting AS16509 Amazon.com, Inc.
Germany, Frankfurt am Main
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 18.198.126.47
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Mesosally, Hottopnews, Agamagcargoan
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Exelator virus?

There are a lot of methods of becoming infected by the adware that lead to the Exelator popups storm. A lion’s part of this virus cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware can additionally be downloaded from the main site, and the adware is presented as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of people regularly utilize the uncertain programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, various apps that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of applications are risky, since it is quite simple to build in a Exelator 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.

Exelator popup malware can likewise be hidden in the ad somewhere on the strange site. Such sites are in most cases packed with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their owners typically approve any kind of promos to be placed on their web page. Therefore, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement provider knows what will occur when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may also receive something a lot more hazardous, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial 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 undesirable programs, like Exelator popup virus may initiate a variety of problems on your PC. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications may show you the banners, where you are offered to download another unknown application, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is usually spread under the last slogun. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and fake antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also used as a distribution way by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these banners, they can be clicked by someone who also makes use of your computer – 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 anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

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

The guide of Exelator adware removal includes 2 parts. Initially, we need to remove the malware, and afterwards deal with the effects of its activity. The removal procedure is quite easy, due to the fact that it can be performed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – security program that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, due to its large resources usage, along with some defects that may be crucial for some groups of individuals, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its usage is likely impossible. Furthermore, various trojan viruses are able to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I’d advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security device that will definitely eliminate the malware from your system and make an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s handle Exelator adware first.

Removing Exelator 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 Exelator 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 make sure that your web browser will be connected the appropriate DNS while connecting to the website you need. Make a text file named “hosts” on your desktop, then open it and fill it with the following text3:

# 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 the things a lot harder to restore, especially without the anti-malware software. A lot of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Exelator pop-up advertisements are altering the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your computer was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and then it will be back to the normal, until you try to open settings 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 Exelator Pop-ups?

Name: Exelator

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