Remove GameZoneNews Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

GameZoneNews pop-up notices can show up out of the blue, covering the material of the page you went to or opening your web browser when you don’t need it to be opened.

Clicking on the GameZoneNews advertisement can lead to the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the manual of GameZoneNews popups removal in various ways, and also inspecting your system for other viruses existence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing GameZoneNews 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 GameZoneNews pop-ups?

GameZoneNews popups are a result of adware action. Adware is a kind of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which creates a large volume of earnings for adware representatives. These ads might have explicit composition, or have a web link to malevolent content/website, because adware maintainers have no reason to check the goodness of the content they are going to show – their single target is money.

GameZoneNews push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is an excellent, low-cost and really successful marketing tool¹. It allows the seller to link the customers’ interest to their site, and the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the customer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to purchase is available at the online shop he/she saw earlier with a 15% price cut, one will definitely use this opportunity and get it. Taking into consideration the incredibly low price for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising tool is a favorite thing amongst the marketing teams of big internet retailers.

Nonetheless, such a rewarding plan could not be missed by malware creators. Option to show the popup ads forcibly to the victims of malware invasion is a perfect basis for malicious tricks with the popup promotions. And Gamezonenews.net promotions is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short info for the GameZoneNews site

How have I got the GameZoneNews virus?

There are a number of methods of becoming contaminated by the adware that trigger the GameZoneNews popups storm. A lion’s part of this computer virus incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software may also be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is delivered as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of users frequently make use of the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, various utilities that are free, and even hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of applications are risky, since it is extremely easy to include a GameZoneNews malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

GameZoneNews popup virus may likewise be hidden in the ad somewhere on the strange site. Such websites are usually filled with bright and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors often permit any promos to be published on their page. For this reason, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad provider realizes what will happen when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may also get something much more damaging, 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 unwanted applications, like GameZoneNews popup virus may provoke a variety of troubles on your computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-ups can display you the promotions, where you are offered to get another unknown program, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the last slogun. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is very 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 promotions are also used as a distribution way by different trojan viruses, for example – 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 tapping these advertisements, they can be clicked by whoever 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 wipe out the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

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

The manual of GameZoneNews adware removal contains 2 parts. Initially, we need to remove the malware, and after that fix the consequences of its activity. The elimination process is very easy, because 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, as a result of its substantial resources utilization, as well as some bugs that may be crucial for some kinds of individuals, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its usage is most likely impossible. Furthermore, a variety of trojan viruses are capable to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I’d advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven antivirus device that will undoubtedly exterminate the malware from your system and also create an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection function. But let’s deal with GameZoneNews adware initially.

Removing GameZoneNews 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 GameZoneNews 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 web browser will definitely connect the proper DNS while connecting to the site you want. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your desktop, after that 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.

However, there is one trouble that makes things much harder to restore, particularly without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware versions that are used to show you the GameZoneNews pop-up promotions are changing the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your computer was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse quickly. In some cases, 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 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 GameZoneNews Pop-ups?

Name: GameZoneNews

Description: GameZoneNews - 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 Gamezonenews.net push notifications?” or “why do Gamezonenews.net pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with GameZoneNews 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 advise it for malware elimination.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.