Remove Minus-light.xyz Virus — How to Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Minus-light.xyz pop-up alerts may appear unexpectedly, covering the material of the page you visited or opening your browser when you don’t wish it to be opened.

Clicking the Minus-light.xyz ad can cause the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the manual of Minus-light.xyz popups clearing in a couple of methods, and also examining your personal computer for other malware presence.

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What are Minus-light.xyz pop-ups?

Minus-light.xyz popups are a result of adware action. Adware is a sort of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which generates a significant amount of revenue for adware representatives. These advertisements may have sometimes shocking content, or have a web link to malevolent content/website, since adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their single target is cash.

Minus-light.xyz push notification

Minus-light.xyz push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a very good, low-priced and also extremely productive marketing solution1. It enables the vendor to attach the customers’ interest to their site, and the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. When the consumer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to purchase is available at the online store he/she saw earlier with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this possibility and get it. Considering the extremely low price for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing method is a much-loved thing among the advertising departments of big online retailers.

Nevertheless, such a profitable system could not be missed by virus creators. Ability to demonstrate the popup ads forcibly to the people of malware attack is a great basis for evil-minded manipulations with the popup advertisements. And Minus-light.xyz advertisements is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a info for the Minus-light.xyz
SiteMinus-light.xyz
HostingAS22612 Namecheap, Inc.
United States, Covina
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address192.64.119.210
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorEyes, Startswiftcompletelythefile, Rsxcf
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Minus-light.xyz virus?

There are a number of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that lead to the Minus-light.xyz popups tornado. A lion’s part of this computer virus instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware may likewise be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is provided as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of users frequently work with the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of tools that are free, or even hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of software are dangerous, since it is quite simple to integrate a Minus-light.xyz 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.

Minus-light.xyz popup malware may likewise be concealed in the advertisement somewhere on the odd web page. Such websites are generally loaded with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors typically permit any promotions to be posted on their page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad provider realizes what will occur when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can additionally get something far more unsafe, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners distribution 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 Minus-light.xyz pop-up virus can initiate a wide range of different problems on your computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications can show you the ads, where you are offered to get another strange program, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the use of the last motto. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and fake antiviruses, popup-related banners are also exploited as a spreading method by various trojan viruses, for example – 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 interacting with these ads, they may be clicked by whoever who also uses your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Minus-light.xyz pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Minus-light.xyz adware removal contains 2 sections. First, we need to deal with the malware, and after that repair the effects of its action. The removal process is very easy, since it can be executed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – security software that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, because of its huge resources consumption, as well as some defects that may be crucial for some groups of users, Defender is oftentimes disabled by the users, so its usage is likely impossible. Furthermore, different trojan viruses are able to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus device that will undoubtedly eliminate the viruses from your computer and create an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s handle Minus-light.xyz adware initially.

Removing Minus-light.xyz 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 Minus-light.xyz 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 web browsers are reset, you need to ensure that your web browser will definitely be connected the right DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your computer’s 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.

However, there is one problem that makes the things much harder to restore, particularly without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware variations that are used to show you the Minus-light.xyz pop-up ads are altering the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your PC was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and afterwards it will be back to the normal, up until you try to open settings once more.

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 Minus-light.xyz Pop-ups?

Name: Minus-light.xyz

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

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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