Remove Hourtenwalk-2.life Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Undesirable Hourtenwalk-2.life pop-up notifications can appear out of the blue, covering the material of the site you checked or opening your browser when you don’t want it to be opened. Clicking on the Hourtenwalk-2.life pop-up ad can result in the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the tutorial of Hourtenwalk-2.life popups clearing in multiple manners, as well as checking your computer for additional viruses presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Hourtenwalk-2.life 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 Hourtenwalk-2.life pop-ups?

Hourtenwalk-2.life popups are an outcome of adware presence. Adware is a sort of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a large volume of revenue for adware representatives. These ads may consist of explicit content, or have a web link to malevolent content/website, since adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the content they are going to show – their single target is money.

Hourtenwalk-2.life push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is an excellent, affordable and also very efficient marketing method¹ It enables the vendor to link the buyers’ interest to their site, and the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the person will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to purchase is available at the online shop he/she saw previously with a 15% discount, one will definitely use this chance and buy it. Taking into consideration the extremely low price for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising tool is a favourite thing amongst the advertising departments of big internet sellers.

However, such a rewarding plan could not be missed by malware developers. Ability to show the popup advertisements by force to the people of malware attack is a great basis for evil-minded tricks with the popup promotions. And Hourtenwalk-2.life ads is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short summary for the Hourtenwalk-2.life site

How have I got the Hourtenwalk-2.life virus?

There are a plenty of ways of becoming infected by the adware that cause the Hourtenwalk-2.life popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software may also be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is delivered as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of people oftentimes make use of the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various apps that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. All of these kinds of applications are unsafe, due to the fact that it is very simple to build in a Hourtenwalk-2.life 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.

Hourtenwalk-2.life popup virus can also be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the odd website. Such websites are in most cases loaded with intense and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors generally accept any type of promotions to be posted on their web page. For this reason, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the ad provider realizes what will happen when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may additionally receive something much more damaging, like ransomware or coin miner; the big 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

How can I get rid of Hourtenwalk-2.life pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Hourtenwalk-2.life adware removal contains 2 sections. First, we need to eliminate the malware, and afterwards correct the results of its activity. The elimination procedure is quite simple, due to the fact that it can be done even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware tool that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, because of its large resources utilization, as well as some failures that may be pivotal for some groups of individuals, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its utilization is likely impossible. In addition, different trojan viruses are capable to turn off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d recommend you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven anti-malware tool that will surely eliminate the malware from your computer and create an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s manage Hourtenwalk-2.life adware initially.

Removing Hourtenwalk-2.life 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 Hourtenwalk-2.life 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 right DNS while connecting to the website you need. Make a text file named “hosts” on your pc’s 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.

Nonetheless, there is one problem that makes things much harder to repair, especially without the anti-malware software. Most of adware variations that are used to show you the Hourtenwalk-2.life pop-up ads are changing the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your machine was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but significant lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and afterwards it will be back to the normal, up 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 review and the reasons why I recommend it for malware elimination.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.