How to remove Gadsmedia pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Gadsmedia pop-up alerts may appear out of the blue, covering the post of the website you explored or opening your browser when you do not need it to be opened.

Clicking on the Gadsmedia promotion can result in the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guide of Gadsmedia popups removal in a couple of methods, and also checking your PC for additional malware presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Gadsmedia 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.

DOWNLOAD NOW

Gridinsoft Anti-Malware 6-day trial available.
EULA | Privacy Policy | 10% Off Coupon

Subscribe to our Telegram channel to be the first to know about news and our exclusive materials on information security.

What are Gadsmedia pop-ups?

Gadsmedia popups are a consequence of adware presence. Adware is a sort of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which creates a substantial amount of profit for adware suppliers. These ads may consist of explicit content, or have a link to malicious content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the material they are going to show – their single target is money.

Gadsmedia push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is an excellent, cheap and extremely effective marketing solution¹. It makes it possible for the seller to link the buyers’ attention to their website, and the buyers 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 purchase is available at the online shop he/she checked out previously with a 15% price cut, one will certainly use this opportunity and purchase it. Taking into consideration the very low cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing method is a favourite thing among the advertising departments of huge internet stores.

Nevertheless, such a rewarding system could not be missed by virus developers. Option to demonstrate the popup advertisements by force to the targets of malware invasion is an ideal basis for malevolent adjustments with the popup advertisements. And Gadsmedia.com ads is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a info for the Gadsmedia site

How have I got the Gadsmedia virus?

There are a lot of ways of getting infected by the adware that cause the Gadsmedia popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware instances is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software can also be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is presented as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of individuals frequently work with the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various utilities that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these types of software are unsafe, due to the fact that it is quite easy to integrate a Gadsmedia 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.

Gadsmedia popup malware can likewise be hidden in the advertisement somewhere on the odd site. Such sites are typically filled with intense and blinking ads, and their owners typically accept any kind of promos to be posted on their web page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement provider knows what will occur when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may likewise receive something much more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

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

Potentially unwanted applications, like Gadsmedia pop-up virus can provoke a variety of troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-ups may present you the advertisements, where you are offered to get one more dubious application, or “a perfect anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the use of the last slogun. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and fake antiviruses, popup-related ads are also exploited as a distribution method by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these ads, they may be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without information loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

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

The manual of Gadsmedia adware clearing contains 2 parts. Initially, we need to eliminate the malware, and afterwards fix the effects of its activity. The removal process is very simple, since it may be done even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus program that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, because of its significant resources utilization, along with some errors that may be crucial for some groups of users, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its utilization is likely impossible. Additionally, different trojan viruses are able to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I would certainly advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven anti-malware device that will surely eliminate the viruses from your personal computer and also make an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s deal with Gadsmedia adware initially.

Removing Gadsmedia 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 Gadsmedia 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 web browsers are reset, you need to make sure that your web browser will be connected the accurate DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your desktop, then open it and fill it with the following lines³:

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 harder to repair, particularly without the anti-malware software. A lot of adware variations that are used to show you the Gadsmedia pop-up promotions are adjusting the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your machine was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the normal, 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.

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.

1. More about pop-up advertisements on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and the reasons why I recommend it for malware elimination.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.