Remove Micalcove Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Micalcove pop-up notices may appear out of the blue, covering the content of the page you went to or opening your browser when you do not desire it to be opened.

Clicking the Micalcove ad may result in the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the tutorial of Micalcove popups clearing in multiple ways, as well as examining your personal computer for extra viruses presence.

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What are Micalcove pop-ups?

Micalcove popups are an outcome of adware presence. Adware is a type of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which produces a large volume of profit for adware distributors. These ads may include explicit content, or have a link to harmful content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

Micalcove push notification

Micalcove push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a good, low-cost and very successful advertising tool1. It enables the seller to attach the buyers’ attention to their site, as well as the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. When the person will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to buy is available at the online shop he/she saw earlier with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this opportunity and buy it. Considering the extremely low price for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing method is a favourite thing amidst the marketing teams of large internet retailers.

Nevertheless, such a rewarding strategy could not be missed by malware developers. Potential to demonstrate the popup advertisements forcibly to the victims of malware attack is a great basis for malevolent adjustments with the popup ads. And Micalcove.com advertisements is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a summary for the Micalcove site
SiteMicalcove.com
HostingAS14618 Amazon.com, Inc.
United States, Ashburn
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address44.195.137.121
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorNews, Rplnd17, Ellernodde
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Micalcove virus?

There are a lot of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that create the Micalcove popups tornado. A lion’s part of this computer virus incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software can additionally be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is supplied as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of people regularly make use of the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various apps that are free, or even hacked programs. All of these kinds of applications are dangerous, since it is extremely easy to include a Micalcove malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Micalcove popup virus may also be concealed in the ad somewhere on the strange website. Such websites are generally packed with intense and blinking ads, and their proprietors usually approve any promos to be posted on their web page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement provider realizes what will occur when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may likewise get something far more unsafe, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious ads.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Micalcove pop-up virus may initiate a lot of troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-up notifications can display you the banners, where you are offered to download one more strange application, or “a perfect security tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the use of the last motto. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is quite hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and fake antiviruses, popup-related banners are also exploited as a distribution method by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these promotions, 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 deal with it without information loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

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

The manual of Micalcove adware elimination consists of 2 parts. Initially, we need to deal with the malware, and after that fix the effects of its action. The removal process is very simple, due to the fact that it may be done even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware software that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, because of its significant resources consumption, as well as some errors that can be pivotal for some categories of individuals, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its use is probably impossible. Moreover, different trojan viruses can shut off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security tool that will surely wipe out the viruses from your system and create an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s handle Micalcove adware first.

Removing Micalcove 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.
  • Gridinsoft Anti-Malware during the scan process

  • 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.
  • GridinSoft Anti-Malware scan results

  • When the scan is over, you may choose the action for each detected virus. For all files of Micalcove malware the default option is “Delete”. Press “Apply” to finish the malware removal.
  • GridinSoft Anti-Malware - After Cleaning

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. Reseting the Edge browser

  3. 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. The first step to revert Mozilla Firefox

  3. In the next screen, find the “Refresh Firefox” option :
  4. The second step of Firefox restoration
    After choosing this option, you will see the next message :
    The last step for Firefox
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 definitely be connected the correct DNS while connecting to the site you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following lines3:

# Copyright (c) 1993-2006 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a ‘#’ symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host
# localhost name resolution is handle within DNS itself.
# 127.0.0.1 localhost
# ::1 localhost

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 issue that makes things a lot more difficult to repair, especially without the anti-malware software. The majority of adware versions that are used to show you the Micalcove pop-up promotions 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 penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the normal, up until 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.

Tools tab in GridinSoft Anti-Malware

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.

Reset Browser Settings tab in GridinSoft Anti-Malware

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 Micalcove Pop-ups?

Name: Micalcove

Description: Micalcove - 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 Micalcove.com push notifications?” or “why do Micalcove.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Micalcove 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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References

  1. More about pop-up advertisements 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.

About the author

Wilbur Woodham

I was a technical writer from early in my career, and consider IT Security one of my foundational skills. I’m sharing my experience here, and I hope you find it useful.

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