Remove Gadgets-protected Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Gadgets-protected pop-up alerts can show up out of the blue, covering the subject of the website you went to or opening your web browser when you don’t wish it to be opened.

Clicking the Gadgets-protected ad can result in the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the manual of Gadgets-protected popups clearing in a couple of ways, as well as checking your system for extra viruses existence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Gadgets-protected 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 Gadgets-protected pop-ups?

Gadgets-protected popups are an outcome of adware action. Adware is a kind of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which produces a large amount of revenue for adware suppliers. These ads might include sometimes shocking material, or have a web link to harmful content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no reason to check the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is money.

Gadgets-protected push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a very good, cheap and also very efficient marketing solution¹. It makes it possible for the vendor to attach the buyers’ attention to their site, and the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to purchase. When the customer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to purchase is offered at the online store he/she saw earlier with a 15% discount, one will surely use this chance and get it. Considering the extremely low cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing instrument is a favorite thing amidst the advertising departments of huge online sellers.

However, such a profitable scheme could not be missed by malware developers. Option to show the popup advertisements forcibly to the victims of malware attack is a perfect basis for evil-minded adjustments with the popup advertisements. And Gadgets-protected.com ads is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short info for the Gadgets-protected

How have I got the Gadgets-protected virus?

There are a plenty of methods of getting infected by the adware that create the Gadgets-protected popups tornado. A lion’s part of this computer virus instances is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software may additionally be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is supplied as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of people frequently make use of the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various utilities that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of applications are unsafe, since it is quite simple to build in a Gadgets-protected malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Gadgets-protected popup malware can also be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the unusual site. Such websites are in most cases loaded with intense and blinking ads, and their proprietors generally permit any kind of promos to be published on their page. Therefore, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the ad provider knows what will occur when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can likewise receive something far more damaging, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious ads.

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

Potentially undesirable programs, like Gadgets-protected pop-up virus may provoke a wide range of different troubles on your computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-up notifications can present you the banners, where you are offered to download another dubious application, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is often spread with the use of the last slogun. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a normal 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 various 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 banners, they may be clicked by whoever who also uses 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 loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Gadgets-protected pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Gadgets-protected adware elimination contains 2 sections. Initially, we need to exterminate the malware, and after that repair the results of its action. The elimination procedure is quite simple, because it can be executed even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-malware tool that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. However, as a result of its large resources utilization, as well as some errors that can be pivotal for some types of individuals, Defender is oftentimes disabled by the users, so its usage is most likely impossible. What’s more, different trojan viruses have the ability to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d suggest you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven anti-malware tool that will certainly remove the malware from your computer and also make an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s manage Gadgets-protected adware initially.

Removing Gadgets-protected 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 Gadgets-protected 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 ensure that your web browser will definitely be connected the right DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Create a text file named “hosts” on your desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following text³:

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 Gadgets-protected pop-up promotions are adjusting the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your PC was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the typical, till 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.

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 Gadgets-protected Pop-ups?

Name: Gadgets-protected

Description: Gadgets-protected - 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 Gadgets-protected.com push notifications?” or “why do Gadgets-protected.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Gadgets-protected 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 overview and also the reasons why I recommend it for malware removal.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.