Remove Greatwinstorms.click Virus — How to Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Greatwinstorms.click pop-up notices can appear out of the blue, covering the content of the site you visited or opening your web browser when you do not desire it to be opened.

Clicking the Greatwinstorms.click ad may trigger the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guide of Greatwinstorms.click popups clearing in several methods, and also examining your system for additional viruses presence.

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What are Greatwinstorms.click pop-ups?

Greatwinstorms.click popups are a result of adware activity. Adware is a sort of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a substantial volume of revenue for adware distributors. These promotions may contain explicit material, or have a link to malicious content/website, since adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

Greatwinstorms.click push notification

Greatwinstorms.click push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a very good, affordable and extremely effective marketing tool1. It permits the vendor to link the customers’ attention to their site, as well as the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the consumer will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to purchase is provided at the online store he/she checked out previously with a 15% price cut, one will definitely use this opportunity and get it. Taking into consideration the extremely small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing method is a much-loved thing amidst the marketing departments of huge internet retailers.

However, such a profitable strategy could not be missed by malware creators. Ability to show the popup advertisements forcibly to the people of malware attack is an excellent basis for malicious tricks with the popup ads. And Greatwinstorms.click promotions is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short info for the Greatwinstorms.click
SiteGreatwinstorms.click
HostingAS14061 DigitalOcean, LLC
Germany, Frankfurt am Main
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address64.227.119.2
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorAtingotherem, Exukpressmy, Rplnd8
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Greatwinstorms.click virus?

There are a number of methods of becoming contaminated by the adware that trigger the Greatwinstorms.click popups storm. A lion’s part of this virus instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software may additionally be downloaded from the main site, and the adware is provided as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of users regularly work with the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different utilities that are free, and even hacked programs. All of these sorts of applications are risky, due to the fact that it is quite easy to integrate a Greatwinstorms.click malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Greatwinstorms.click popup malware can also be concealed in the ad somewhere on the unusual site. Such web pages are in most cases packed with colorful and blinking ads, and their proprietors generally permit any kind of promotions to be placed on their page. Therefore, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement provider realizes what will occur when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may additionally receive something far more threatening, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially unwanted programs, like Greatwinstorms.click popup virus can initiate a lot of different problems on your PC. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications may show you the banners, where you are offered to get another unknown program, or “a perfect security tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the last motto. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also used as a distribution way by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these promotions, they can be clicked by someone who also uses your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without information loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Greatwinstorms.click pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Greatwinstorms.click adware clearing contains 2 parts. Initially, we need to remove the malware, and after that take care of the consequences of its activity. The removal process is pretty simple, because it may be performed even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-malware tool that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, as a result of its significant resources usage, along with some errors that may be critical for some types of individuals, Defender is oftentimes disabled by the users, so its usage is most likely impossible. Additionally, a variety of trojan viruses are capable to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I would certainly recommend you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus tool that will surely wipe out the malware from your personal computer and make an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s handle Greatwinstorms.click adware first.

Removing Greatwinstorms.click 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 Greatwinstorms.click 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 ensure that your browser will definitely connect the right DNS while connecting to the website you want. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your desktop, then 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.

Nevertheless, there is one problem that makes things a lot more difficult to fix, particularly without the anti-malware software. The majority of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Greatwinstorms.click pop-up ads are modifying the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your PC was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, but significant lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and after that it will be back to the typical, until you try 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.

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 Greatwinstorms.click Pop-ups?

Name: Greatwinstorms.click

Description: Greatwinstorms.click - 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 Greatwinstorms.click push notifications?” or “why do Greatwinstorms.click pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Greatwinstorms.click 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 suggest it for malware removal.
  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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