Headcaptcha.live Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Headcaptcha.live pop-up notices may appear unexpectedly, covering the material of the website you went to or opening your web browser when you don’t need it to be opened.

Clicking on the Headcaptcha.live ad may lead to the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the tutorial of Headcaptcha.live popups clearing in multiple manners, as well as inspecting your computer for extra malware presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Headcaptcha.live 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 Headcaptcha.live pop-ups?

Headcaptcha.live popups are a consequence 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 large amount of earnings for adware representatives. These ads might have explicit information, or have a link to harmful content/website, since adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the content they are going to show – their solitary target is money.

Headcaptcha.live push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a very good, cheap and also extremely efficient marketing instrument¹. It allows the seller to link the buyers’ interest to their website, as well as the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the person will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he likes to purchase is offered at the online store he/she visited earlier with a 15% price cut, one will certainly use this opportunity and buy it. Taking into consideration the very small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing method is a favourite thing amidst the advertising departments of large online sellers.

Nevertheless, such a successful scheme could not be missed by virus developers. Ability to demonstrate the popup ads by force to the people of malware invasion is an ideal basis for malicious tricks with the popup advertisements. And Headcaptcha.live advertisements is among hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short summary for the Headcaptcha.live site

How have I got the Headcaptcha.live virus?

There are a lot of methods of getting contaminated by the adware that cause the Headcaptcha.live popups storm. A lion’s part of this 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 main site, and the adware is provided as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of individuals regularly use the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various tools that are free, or perhaps hacked programs. All of these sorts of applications are dangerous, because it is very simple to integrate a Headcaptcha.live 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.

Headcaptcha.live popup virus can likewise be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the strange site. Such sites are usually full of colorful and blinking ads, and their owners usually approve any kind of promotions to be posted on their web page. Hence, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad provider knows what will occur when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can likewise get something a lot more damaging, 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 undesirable programs, like Headcaptcha.live popup virus may initiate a variety of different problems on your computer. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-up notifications can show you the promotions, where you are offered to download another strange program, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the last motto. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is very hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and fake antiviruses, popup-related ads are also exploited as a spreading method by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these ads, they can be clicked by someone who also makes use of your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Headcaptcha.live pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Headcaptcha.live adware removal contains 2 parts. Initially, we need to deal with the malware, and then fix the effects of its activity. The removal procedure is quite simple, since it can be done even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware program that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, as a result of its significant resources consumption, as well as some bugs that may be critical for some categories of individuals, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its utilization is most likely impossible. Additionally, various trojan viruses have the ability to disable the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven security tool that will undoubtedly erase the malware from your personal computer and create an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection function. But let’s deal with Headcaptcha.live adware initially.

Removing Headcaptcha.live 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 Headcaptcha.live 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 ensure that your web browser will be connected the accurate DNS while connecting to the site you want. Create a text file named “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.

Nevertheless, there is one issue that makes things a lot harder to fix, especially without the anti-malware software. The majority of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Headcaptcha.live pop-up promotions are altering the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your machine was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, but large lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and after that it will be back to the normal, until you attempt to open settings one more time.

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 overview and also the reasons why I suggest it for malware elimination.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.