Remove History-cleaner.xyz Virus — How to Fix Guide

History-cleaner.xyz pop-up alerts may appear out of the blue, covering the subject of the site you went to or opening your browser when you don’t need it to be opened.

Clicking the History-cleaner.xyz advertisement can lead to the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the tutorial of History-cleaner.xyz popups clearing in several methods, as well as examining your computer for other malware presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing History-cleaner.xyz 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 History-cleaner.xyz pop-ups?

History-cleaner.xyz popups are an effect of adware action. Adware is a kind of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which creates a significant volume of earnings for adware distributors. These ads might include sometimes shocking information, or have a link to harmful content/website, because adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the material they are going to reveal – their solitary target is money.

History-cleaner.xyz push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is an excellent, affordable and also very productive marketing instrument¹. It allows the vendor to attach the customers’ interest to their site, as well as the buyers to get 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 shop he/she saw previously with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this possibility and purchase it. Considering the incredibly small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing tool is a favourite thing amidst the marketing departments of large online retail stores.

Nevertheless, such a profitable system could not be missed by virus developers. Potential to demonstrate the popup advertisements by force to the victims of malware invasion is a perfect basis for evil-minded manipulations with the popup advertisements. And History-cleaner.xyz advertisements is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a info for the History-cleaner.xyz site

How have I got the History-cleaner.xyz virus?

There are a plenty of methods of becoming infected by the adware that trigger the History-cleaner.xyz popups storm. A lion’s part of this computer virus cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware may likewise be downloaded from the official web page, and the adware is provided as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of individuals frequently use the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different apps that are free, or even hacked programs. Every one of these types of programs are unsafe, due to the fact that it is very easy to integrate a History-cleaner.xyz 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.

History-cleaner.xyz popup malware can also be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the strange site. Such websites are usually full of bright and blinking ads, and their proprietors generally permit any kind of promotions to be published on their web page. For this reason, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement provider realizes what will happen when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may additionally receive something much more dangerous, 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 applications, like History-cleaner.xyz popup virus can cause a wide range of problems on your PC. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-ups can present you the ads, where you are offered to get another dubious application, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the last motto. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is very hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related banners are also chosen as a spreading way by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these ads, 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 solve it without information loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of History-cleaner.xyz pop-up advertisements?

The manual of History-cleaner.xyz adware elimination contains 2 sections. Initially, we need to get rid of the malware, and after that deal with the results of its action. The elimination process is really simple, because it can be done even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-virus tool that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, because of its significant resources usage, along with some bugs that may be critical for some groups of users, Defender is oftentimes turned off by the users, so its utilization is most likely impossible. What’s more, a wide range of trojan viruses are capable to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to make use of the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I would certainly suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven anti-malware device that will certainly remove the viruses from your personal computer and also create an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s take care of History-cleaner.xyz adware first.

Removing History-cleaner.xyz 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 History-cleaner.xyz 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 web browser will be connected the appropriate DNS while connecting to the website you need. Create a text file named “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following text³:

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 issue that makes the things a lot harder to restore, particularly without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware variants that are used to show you the History-cleaner.xyz pop-up advertisements are altering the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your PC was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and after that it will be back to the typical, until 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.

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