Remove Holywoodspecialsecrets Pop-up Ads — How to Fix Gude

Holywoodspecialsecrets pop-up notices may appear unexpectedly, covering the subject of the page you went to or opening your browser when you don’t want it to be opened.

Clicking on the Holywoodspecialsecrets promotion may cause the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the manual of Holywoodspecialsecrets popups clearing in various manners, and also examining your PC for extra viruses presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Holywoodspecialsecrets 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 Holywoodspecialsecrets pop-ups?

Holywoodspecialsecrets popups are an outcome of adware action. Adware is a kind of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which produces a major amount of income for adware distributors. These promotions might consist of explicit information, or have a link to malicious content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no reason to check the goodness of the web content they are going to show – their single target is money.

Holywoodspecialsecrets push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a very good, low-cost and really productive advertising instrument¹. It allows the vendor to attach the buyers’ attention to their website, as well as the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the customer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to purchase is offered at the online shop he/she visited previously with a 15% price cut, one will definitely use this opportunity and buy it. Taking into consideration the extremely small cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising instrument is a favourite thing amongst the advertising teams of large internet retailers.

However, such a successful system could not be missed by virus developers. Ability to demonstrate the popup ads by force to the people of malware invasion is an excellent basis for malevolent tricks with the popup ads. And Holywoodspecialsecrets.com ads is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short details for the Holywoodspecialsecrets

How have I got the Holywoodspecialsecrets virus?

There are a plenty of ways of getting infected by the adware that create the Holywoodspecialsecrets popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus incidents is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware may additionally be downloaded from the official web page, and the adware is presented as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of users regularly make use of the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, various apps that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. All of these types of applications are dangerous, due to the fact that it is quite easy to integrate a Holywoodspecialsecrets malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Holywoodspecialsecrets popup malware may likewise be hidden in the ad somewhere on the strange web page. Such sites are generally packed with intense and blinking advertisements, and their owners typically permit any kind of promotions to be posted on their page. Thus, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement provider knows what will happen when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can additionally get something far more damaging, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

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

Potentially unwanted programs, like Holywoodspecialsecrets popup virus can cause a variety of troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-ups may display you the banners, where you are offered to get one more unknown application, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the use of the last motto. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related banners are also chosen as a distribution method by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these promotions, they can be clicked by someone who also uses your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can 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 anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

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

The manual of Holywoodspecialsecrets adware elimination consists of 2 sections. Initially, we need to exterminate the malware, and then take care of the consequences of its activity. The removal procedure is really easy, because it can be executed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus tool that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, as a result of its significant resources utilization, along with some errors that can be critical for some categories of individuals, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its usage is likely impossible. Additionally, various trojan viruses are able to disable the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I’d advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven antivirus device that will definitely wipe out the viruses from your personal computer and make an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s manage Holywoodspecialsecrets adware initially.

Removing Holywoodspecialsecrets 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 Holywoodspecialsecrets 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 definitely be connected the right DNS while connecting to the site you need. Make a text file named “hosts” on your computer’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.

However, there is one problem that makes the things much more difficult to restore, specifically without the anti-malware program. Most of adware variations that are used to show you the Holywoodspecialsecrets pop-up advertisements are modifying the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your machine 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 pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the typical, till 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 the reasons why I recommend it for malware elimination.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.