Remove Lightgreenstep Pop-up Ads — How to Fix Gude

Lightgreenstep pop-up notices can appear unexpectedly, covering the post of the site you explored or opening your browser when you do not wish it to be opened.

Clicking on the Lightgreenstep ad may trigger the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guide of Lightgreenstep popups removal in several manners, and also inspecting your system for additional viruses presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Lightgreenstep 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 Lightgreenstep pop-ups?

Lightgreenstep popups are a result of adware activity. Adware is a sort of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which creates a significant volume of earnings for adware distributors. These ads may consist of explicit material, or have a link to malevolent content/website, because adware maintainers have no reason to check the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is cash.

Lightgreenstep push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a good, low-priced and also extremely efficient marketing method¹. It enables the seller to link the customers’ interest to their website, as well as the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to purchase. When the customer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he likes to buy is provided at the online store he/she visited earlier with a 15% price cut, one will surely use this opportunity and get it. Considering the extremely small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing method is a favorite thing amidst the advertising departments of large online retail stores.

Nonetheless, such a rewarding plan could not be missed by malware developers. Ability to show the popup ads forcibly to the targets of malware attack is an ideal basis for malevolent tricks with the popup ads. And Lightgreenstep.com advertisements is among hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short summary for the Lightgreenstep

How have I got the Lightgreenstep virus?

There are a number of ways of getting infected by the adware that result in the Lightgreenstep popups storm. A lion’s part of this computer virus instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software can also be downloaded from the main site, and the adware is supplied as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of individuals often work with the uncertain programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, various tools that are free of cost, or even hacked programs. All of these kinds of applications are unsafe, due to the fact that it is quite easy to include a Lightgreenstep malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Lightgreenstep popup malware can also be concealed in the ad somewhere on the unusual web page. Such websites are generally filled with intense and blinking advertisements, and their owners often approve any type of promos to be published on their page. Therefore, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the ad provider knows what will happen when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can also get something far more unsafe, 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 Lightgreenstep pop-up virus may initiate a lot of problems on your PC. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-ups may display you the advertisements, where you are offered to get one more unknown program, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is usually spread under the last slogun. Potentially unwanted 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 PUPs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related banners are also used as a distribution method by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these advertisements, they can be clicked by someone who also makes use of your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

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

The guide of Lightgreenstep adware removal includes 2 sections. Initially, we need to deal with the malware, and after that take care of the effects of its activity. The elimination procedure is pretty easy, since it can be done even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-malware program that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, because of its huge resources usage, along with some bugs that may be pivotal for some categories of individuals, Defender is oftentimes disabled by the users, so its use is probably impossible. Additionally, a variety of trojan viruses are able to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I would certainly advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven security device that will certainly remove the viruses from your system and make an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s manage Lightgreenstep adware initially.

Removing Lightgreenstep 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 Lightgreenstep 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 definitely connect the accurate DNS while connecting to the site you need. Create a text file titled “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.

Nevertheless, there is one trouble that makes things a lot harder to restore, especially without the anti-malware software. A lot of adware variations that are used to show you the Lightgreenstep pop-up ads are changing 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 certainly collapse quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the normal, till you try to open settings 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.

How to Remove Lightgreenstep Pop-ups?

Name: Lightgreenstep

Description: Lightgreenstep - a lot of users became a target for the pop-up advertisements. I have a lot of friends who literally bombed me with the questions like “how to remove Lightgreenstep.com push notifications?” or “why do Lightgreenstep.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Lightgreenstep pop-ups, which may corrupt your browser’s correct performance, and create a lot of troubles while you are working.

Operating System: Windows

Application Category: Adware

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