Remove Hetaint Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Hetaint pop-up notifications can show up unexpectedly, covering the subject of the site you explored or opening your web browser when you don’t wish it to be opened.

Clicking on the Hetaint ad may lead to the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guide of Hetaint popups removal in a couple of methods, as well as checking your personal computer for extra viruses existence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Hetaint 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 Hetaint pop-ups?

Hetaint popups are a consequence of adware presence. Adware is a kind of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which creates a significant amount of earnings for adware suppliers. These ads may consist of sometimes shocking material, or have a link to malicious content/website, because adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the material they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

Hetaint push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a very good, affordable and also really effective marketing solution¹. It enables the vendor to attach the customers’ interest to their website, as well as the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the customer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he likes to buy is provided at the online shop he/she visited earlier with a 15% price cut, one will certainly use this chance and buy it. Considering the incredibly low cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising method is a favourite thing amidst the advertising departments of big internet retail stores.

However, such a rewarding system could not be missed by malware developers. Option to show the popup advertisements forcibly to the targets of malware invasion is a great basis for evil-minded tricks with the popup promotions. And Hetaint.com advertisements is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short details for the Hetaint

How have I got the Hetaint virus?

There are a plenty of methods of becoming infected by the adware that cause the Hetaint popups tornado. A lion’s part of this computer virus incidents is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware may additionally be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is delivered as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of people oftentimes use the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, different apps that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of software are dangerous, since it is extremely easy to integrate a Hetaint malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Hetaint popup virus can likewise be concealed in the advertisement somewhere on the unusual web page. Such sites are usually loaded with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors typically accept any type of promotions to be posted on their page. Thus, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the ad provider realizes what will happen when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may also get something a lot more hazardous, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious promotions.

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

Potentially unwanted programs, like Hetaint pop-up virus may provoke a variety of problems on your PC. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-up notifications can display you the advertisements, where you are offered to download another dubious program, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the last motto. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, may have spyware functions. 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 pseudo antiviruses, popup-related ads are also used as a distribution way by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these promotions, they may 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 solve it without data and money loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

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

The guide of Hetaint adware removal contains 2 sections. First, we need to deal with the malware, and after that fix the consequences of its activity. The elimination task is quite easy, since it may be executed even with using Microsoft Defender – security program that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, because of its large resources consumption, along with some errors that can be critical for some categories of individuals, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its utilization is probably impossible. Moreover, various trojan viruses can disable the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d advise you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven antivirus tool that will certainly remove the malware from your personal computer and also create an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s deal with Hetaint adware initially.

Removing Hetaint 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 Hetaint 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 make sure that your web browser will connect the appropriate DNS while connecting to the site you want. Make 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 repair, specifically without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware versions that are used to show you the Hetaint pop-up advertisements are altering the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your machine was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and after that it will be back to the normal, till you attempt 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.

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 advise it for malware removal.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.