Remove Hathick Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Hathick pop-up notices may appear unexpectedly, covering the post of the site you checked or opening your web browser when you do not need it to be opened.

Clicking on the Hathick promotion can trigger the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the tutorial of Hathick popups clearing in a couple of ways, as well as examining your personal computer for other viruses presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Hathick 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 Hathick pop-ups?

Hathick popups are a consequence of adware presence. Adware is a sort of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a major volume of income for adware representatives. These ads might consist of sometimes shocking information, or have a web link to malevolent content/website, because adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the content they are going to show – their single target is cash.

Hathick push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a very good, cheap and extremely efficient advertising solution¹. It permits the vendor to link the buyers’ interest to their site, as well as the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the person will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he likes to purchase is provided at the online shop he/she visited previously with a 15% discount, one will undoubtedly use this opportunity and buy it. Taking into consideration the exceptionally low cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing method is a favorite thing among the advertising departments of huge online retailers.

Nevertheless, such a profitable scheme could not be missed by virus developers. Ability to show the popup advertisements forcibly to the people of malware attack is a great basis for malicious tricks with the popup advertisements. And Hathick.info advertisements is among hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short summary for the Hathick

How have I got the Hathick virus?

There are a huge amount of methods of getting infected by the adware that trigger the Hathick popups storm. A lion’s part of this computer virus instances is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software may additionally be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is provided as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of people frequently utilize the unreliable programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, various tools that are free, and even hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of programs are dangerous, since it is quite easy to integrate a Hathick malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Hathick popup virus may also be hidden in the ad somewhere on the unusual website. Such web pages are usually full of colorful and blinking advertisements, and their owners often approve any type of promos to be placed on their page. Hence, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the ad provider realizes what will happen when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may likewise receive something much more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the large 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 programs, like Hathick popup virus can cause a lot of problems on your personal computer. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-ups may present you the banners, where you are offered to get another dubious program, or “a perfect security tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the last motto. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and fake antiviruses, popup-related banners are also used as a distribution way by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these banners, they can be clicked by whoever who also uses your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

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

The tutorial of Hathick adware removal consists of 2 sections. Initially, we need to deal with the malware, and then fix the results of its activity. The removal process is very simple, because it can be done even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus tool that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, due to its huge resources consumption, along with some problems that may be serious for some kinds of individuals, Defender is frequently turned off by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. Additionally, a variety of trojan viruses can disable the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I would certainly recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven security device that will undoubtedly erase the viruses from your PC and make an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s manage Hathick adware initially.

Removing Hathick 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 Hathick 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 correct DNS while connecting to the website you need. 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.

However, there is one issue that makes things a lot harder to repair, especially without the anti-malware software. Most of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Hathick pop-up advertisements are altering the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your system was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and then it will be back to the typical, until you attempt 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.

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