Oldharper.xyz Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Written by Wilbur Woodham

Unwanted Oldharper.xyz pop-up notices may appear out of the blue, covering the material of the site you explored or opening your web browser when you do not want it to be opened. Clicking the Oldharper.xyz pop-up ad can trigger the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guideline of Oldharper.xyz popups removal in a couple of ways, as well as examining your computer for additional malware existence.

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What are Oldharper.xyz pop-ups?

Oldharper.xyz popups are an effect of adware presence. Adware is a sort of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which generates a significant volume of income for adware suppliers. These ads might consist of sometimes shocking composition, or have a link to harmful content/website, since adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is money.

Oldharper.xyz push notification

Oldharper.xyz push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a very good, low-cost and also very effective marketing instrument1 It makes it possible for the seller to link the buyers’ attention to their site, as well as the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the customer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to purchase is provided at the online store he/she checked out earlier with a 15% discount, one will certainly use this opportunity and get it. Taking into consideration the very small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing method is a favourite thing among the marketing teams of big online stores.

Nevertheless, such a profitable scheme could not be missed by malware developers. Ability to demonstrate the popup ads forcibly to the people of malware attack is an excellent basis for malevolent adjustments with the popup ads. And Oldharper.xyz advertisements is among hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a info for the Oldharper.xyz site
Site Oldharper.xyz
Hosting AS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.
United States, San Francisco
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 172.67.190.74
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Pdfsearchapps.com, New.notification, Sportssearchhd.com
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Oldharper.xyz virus?

There are a plenty of ways of getting infected by the adware that create the Oldharper.xyz popups tornado. A lion’s part of this computer virus cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software can likewise be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is presented as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of individuals often use the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of tools that are free of cost, or even hacked programs. All of these sorts of programs are unsafe, because it is quite easy to build in a Oldharper.xyz 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.

Oldharper.xyz popup malware can also be hidden in the ad somewhere on the strange website. Such web pages are generally loaded with bright and blinking ads, and their proprietors generally permit any type of promotions to be published on their web page. Thus, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement provider knows what will occur when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can also receive something much more hazardous, like ransomware or coin miner; the big 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

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

The manual of Oldharper.xyz adware clearing contains 2 sections. Initially, we need to exterminate the malware, and then take care of the effects of its action. The removal procedure is pretty easy, since it can be executed even with using Microsoft Defender – security program that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, as a result of its huge resources usage, as well as some failures that can be critical for some groups of individuals, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its use is likely impossible. In addition, different trojan viruses are capable to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I would certainly suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus device that will undoubtedly wipe out the malware from your PC and make an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s deal with Oldharper.xyz adware first.

Removing Oldharper.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 Oldharper.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 browser will definitely connect the correct DNS while connecting to the website you need. Make a text file named “hosts” on your desktop, then open it and fill it with the following text3:

# 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 the things much harder to repair, particularly without the anti-malware software. The majority of adware variations that are used to show you the Oldharper.xyz pop-up promotions are adjusting the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your system was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and after that it will be back to the normal, up until you attempt 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 Oldharper.xyz Pop-ups?

Name: Oldharper.xyz

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

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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