Remove Nowtosearch Pop-up Ads — How to Fix Gude

Nowtosearch pop-up alerts may appear out of the blue, covering the subject of the site you explored or opening your web browser when you do not want it to be opened.

Clicking the Nowtosearch advertisement may cause the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guideline of Nowtosearch popups clearing in several manners, and also checking your PC for extra malware existence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Nowtosearch 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 Nowtosearch pop-ups?

Nowtosearch popups are a result of adware activity. Adware is a type of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which generates a major amount of profit for adware suppliers. These ads may include sometimes shocking composition, or have a web link to malevolent content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no reason to check the goodness of the material they are going to show – their solitary target is cash.

Nowtosearch push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a very good, affordable and also extremely efficient marketing solution¹. It permits the vendor to link the customers’ interest to their website, and the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they want to purchase. When the person will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to purchase is offered at the online store he/she visited previously with a 15% discount, one will certainly use this possibility and purchase it. Considering the extremely small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing tool is a much-loved thing amongst the advertising departments of big internet retailers.

However, such a profitable system could not be missed by virus creators. Option to show the popup ads forcibly to the targets of malware invasion is a great basis for evil-minded tricks with the popup promotions. And Nowtosearch.com promotions is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a summary for the Nowtosearch

How have I got the Nowtosearch virus?

There are a number of ways of becoming contaminated by the adware that create the Nowtosearch popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus incidents is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software may likewise be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is delivered as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of users oftentimes use the unreliable programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, different utilities that are free of cost, or even hacked programs. All of these types of programs are unsafe, because it is extremely easy to build in a Nowtosearch malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Nowtosearch popup malware may likewise be hidden in the advertisement somewhere on the strange site. Such sites are in most cases loaded with bright and blinking advertisements, and their owners usually accept any kind of promos to be posted on their web page. Hence, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement contractor knows what will happen when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may also receive something much more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious promotions.

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Nowtosearch popup virus can cause a variety of different troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-ups may show you the ads, where you are offered to get another strange application, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually spread under the last motto. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also chosen as a spreading way by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these promotions, they can be clicked by whoever who also uses your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

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

The guide of Nowtosearch adware removal consists of 2 sections. First, we need to remove the malware, and after that take care of the effects of its activity. The elimination procedure is very simple, since it may be done even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus tool that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, due to its significant resources usage, as well as some errors that may be pivotal for some kinds of users, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. What’s more, different trojan viruses can shut off the embedded antivirus. It is better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d suggest you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven anti-malware tool that will definitely remove the malware from your computer and also create an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s deal with Nowtosearch adware initially.

Removing Nowtosearch 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 Nowtosearch 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 connect the right DNS while connecting to the site you want. Make a text file named “hosts” on your pc’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.

However, there is one trouble that makes things much more difficult to restore, particularly without the anti-malware program. A lot of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Nowtosearch pop-up ads are adjusting the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your computer was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and afterwards it will be back to the typical, 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.

How to Remove Nowtosearch Pop-ups?

Name: Nowtosearch

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