Remove Groundflares Virus — How to Fix Guide

Groundflares pop-up notifications can appear unexpectedly, covering the subject of the website you visited or opening your web browser when you do not need it to be opened.

Clicking on the Groundflares advertisement may trigger the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the tutorial of Groundflares popups clearing in various methods, and also examining your personal computer for extra malware existence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Groundflares 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 pop-ups?

Groundflares popups are an effect of adware activity. Adware is a type of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which creates a significant amount of income for adware representatives. These promotions may include sometimes shocking content, or have a link to malicious content/website, since adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the content they are going to show – their solitary target is money.

Groundflares push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a good, low-priced and really successful advertising method¹. It permits the vendor to attach the customers’ attention to their site, as well as the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the person will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he likes to buy is provided at the online shop he/she visited previously with a 15% price cut, one will surely use this possibility and get it. Considering the incredibly small cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing instrument is a much-loved thing among the marketing teams of big online retail stores.

Nonetheless, such a rewarding scheme could not be missed by malware developers. Ability to demonstrate the popup advertisements by force to the targets of malware attack is a great basis for malicious tricks with the popup advertisements. And Groundflares.com advertisements is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short summary for the Groundflares

How have I got the Groundflares virus?

There are a lot of methods of becoming infected by the adware that trigger the Groundflares popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware can also be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is provided as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of people oftentimes utilize the uncertain programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, a wide range of utilities that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of software are unsafe, because it is quite easy to build in a Groundflares 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.

Groundflares popup malware may also be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the unusual site. Such web pages are typically filled with intense and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors often accept any promos to be posted on their page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement provider realizes what will happen when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can likewise get something far more dangerous, 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 unwanted programs, like Groundflares pop-up virus can provoke a variety of different troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-ups can display you the advertisements, where you are offered to download one more unknown program, or “a perfect security tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the use of the last slogun. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, may 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 potentially unwanted programs and fake antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also chosen as a spreading method by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these advertisements, they may be clicked by someone who also makes use of your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without information loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

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

The tutorial of Groundflares adware elimination consists of 2 parts. Initially, we need to eliminate the malware, and afterwards fix the effects of its activity. The elimination process is very easy, since it can be performed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus tool that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, as a result of its substantial resources consumption, as well as some defects that may be critical for some kinds of individuals, Defender is oftentimes disabled by the users, so its utilization is likely impossible. In addition, various trojan viruses are able to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d recommend you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven antivirus device that will undoubtedly wipe out the malware from your system and make an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection function. But let’s deal with Groundflares adware initially.

Removing Groundflares 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 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 proper DNS while connecting to the site you need. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your desktop, after that 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.

However, there is one problem that makes things a lot more difficult to fix, specifically without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware versions that are used to show you the Groundflares pop-up advertisements are modifying the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your system was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the typical, till you attempt to open settings once 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 Pop-ups?

Name: Groundflares

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