Remove Linkwinners.net Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Linkwinners.net pop-up alerts can appear unexpectedly, covering the post of the site you visited or opening your browser when you don’t need it to be opened.

Clicking the Linkwinners.net promotion may cause the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guideline of Linkwinners.net popups removal in multiple manners, as well as inspecting your computer for extra malware presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Linkwinners.net 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 Linkwinners.net pop-ups?

Linkwinners.net popups are an outcome of adware activity. Adware is a sort of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a significant amount of profit for adware representatives. These ads may include explicit content, or have a web link to malicious content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the material they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

Linkwinners.net push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a good, low-cost and also very productive advertising instrument¹. It permits the vendor to link the buyers’ attention to their website, as well as the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the customer will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to buy is offered at the online store he/she saw earlier with a 15% price cut, one will definitely use this possibility and get it. Considering the exceptionally low cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing method is a much-loved thing amongst the advertising departments of big internet retail stores.

However, such a profitable strategy could not be missed by malware creators. Ability to show the popup ads by force to the people of malware invasion is an excellent basis for malicious tricks with the popup advertisements. And Linkwinners.net advertisements is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short summary for the Linkwinners.net

How have I got the Linkwinners.net virus?

There are a lot of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that lead to the Linkwinners.net popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware can likewise be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is presented as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of individuals oftentimes use the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different apps that are free, or perhaps hacked programs. All of these types of applications are unsafe, since it is quite simple to build in a Linkwinners.net 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.

Linkwinners.net popup virus may likewise be concealed in the ad somewhere on the strange site. Such websites are usually filled with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their owners often approve any promotions to be placed on their page. For this reason, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the ad contractor realizes what will occur when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can also get something far more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the big 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 Linkwinners.net popup virus may initiate a wide range of problems on your computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-ups may present you the ads, where you are offered to download one more dubious application, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is often spread under the last motto. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is very hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also used as a distribution method by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these ads, they may be clicked by whoever who also makes use of 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 wipe out the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Linkwinners.net pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Linkwinners.net adware clearing contains 2 parts. Initially, we need to remove the malware, and afterwards repair the consequences of its action. The elimination procedure is really simple, since it can be performed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware program that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, because of its substantial resources usage, along with some bugs that can be pivotal for some groups of users, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. Furthermore, a variety of trojan viruses are able to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I would certainly recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven anti-malware device that will definitely wipe out the viruses from your computer and create an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s handle Linkwinners.net adware initially.

Removing Linkwinners.net 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 Linkwinners.net 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 correct DNS while connecting to the web page you need. Create a text file named “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following lines³:

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 harder to restore, particularly without the anti-malware software. A lot of adware variants that are used to show you the Linkwinners.net pop-up promotions are changing the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your system was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and afterwards it will be back to the normal, 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.

How to Remove Linkwinners.net Pop-ups?

Name: Linkwinners.net

Description: Linkwinners.net - 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 Linkwinners.net push notifications?” or “why do Linkwinners.net pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Linkwinners.net 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 overview and the reasons why I recommend it for malware elimination.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.