Remove Groundflares.net Virus — How to Fix Guide

Groundflares.net pop-up notices can appear out of the blue, covering the subject of the site you checked or opening your web browser when you don’t want it to be opened.

Clicking on the Groundflares.net advertisement may lead to the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guide of Groundflares.net popups clearing in multiple manners, as well as checking your personal computer for additional malware presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Groundflares.net 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 Groundflares.net pop-ups?

Groundflares.net popups are an outcome of adware action. Adware is a kind of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which generates a substantial amount of revenue for adware distributors. These advertisements might contain sometimes shocking material, or have a link to malicious content/website, because adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the material they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

Groundflares.net push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is an excellent, cheap and also extremely successful marketing tool¹. It permits the vendor to attach the customers’ interest to their site, and the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they want to purchase. When the customer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to purchase is offered at the online store he/she visited earlier with a 15% discount, one will undoubtedly use this chance and get it. Considering the incredibly low price for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising tool is a favorite thing amongst the advertising teams of huge online retail stores.

Nevertheless, such a successful system could not be missed by malware creators. Ability to demonstrate the popup advertisements forcibly to the people of malware invasion is a great basis for malicious tricks with the popup advertisements. And Groundflares.net promotions is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short info for the Groundflares.net

How have I got the Groundflares.net virus?

There are a number of methods of getting contaminated by the adware that trigger the Groundflares.net popups storm. A lion’s part of this computer virus instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware can likewise be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is supplied as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of people regularly utilize the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, a wide range of utilities that are free, and even hacked programs. All of these types of applications are dangerous, since it is extremely simple to build in a Groundflares.net 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.

Groundflares.net popup malware may additionally be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the odd site. Such web pages are in most cases full of intense and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors usually permit any type of promotions to be published on their web page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the ad provider knows what will occur when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may also receive something much more threatening, like ransomware or coin miner; the big 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 undesirable programs, like Groundflares.net popup virus may provoke a lot of problems on your personal computer. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-ups can show you the promotions, where you are offered to download one more unknown application, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the last slogun. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related ads are also exploited as a spreading way by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these banners, they can be clicked by whoever who also uses your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data and money loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Groundflares.net pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Groundflares.net adware elimination consists of 2 parts. First, we need to deal with the malware, and afterwards fix the effects of its action. The elimination process is pretty simple, because it can be performed even with using Microsoft Defender – security software that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, because of its significant resources utilization, along with some problems that may be serious for some types of individuals, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its utilization is most likely impossible. What’s more, a wide range of trojan viruses can switch off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I would certainly suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven antivirus tool that will undoubtedly erase the malware from your system and also create an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s manage Groundflares.net adware initially.

Removing Groundflares.net 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 Groundflares.net 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 ensure that your browser will definitely be connected the accurate DNS while connecting to the web page you need. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following content³:

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 problem that makes things much more difficult to fix, specifically without the anti-malware software. The majority of adware versions that are used to show you the Groundflares.net pop-up promotions are changing the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your system was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and after that it will be back to the normal, 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 Groundflares.net Pop-ups?

Name: Groundflares.net

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