Remove Petsown Virus — How to Fix Guide

Petsown pop-up notices can show up unexpectedly, covering the material of the page you explored or opening your web browser when you do not desire it to be opened.

Clicking on the Petsown advertisement may trigger the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guide of Petsown popups clearing in a couple of methods, and also checking your personal computer for extra viruses presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Petsown 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 Petsown pop-ups?

Petsown popups are a consequence of adware presence. Adware is a sort of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which generates a massive volume of profit for adware distributors. These promotions may have explicit information, or have a link to malevolent content/website, because adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the content they are going to show – their solitary target is cash.

Petsown push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a very good, low-cost and really successful marketing instrument¹. It enables the vendor to link 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 consumer will get 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% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this possibility and get it. Considering the very small cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing method is a much-loved thing among the marketing teams of big internet retailers.

Nevertheless, such a successful strategy could not be missed by virus developers. Potential to demonstrate the popup ads forcibly to the targets of malware invasion is an excellent basis for malevolent adjustments with the popup advertisements. And Petsown.xyz advertisements is among hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a summary for the Petsown

How have I got the Petsown virus?

There are a number of ways of becoming infected by the adware that create the Petsown popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware instances is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software may additionally be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is presented as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of individuals frequently make use of the unreliable programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, different apps that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of applications are unsafe, because it is quite easy to build in a Petsown 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.

Petsown popup virus can likewise be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the strange site. Such sites are generally full of bright and blinking ads, and their proprietors usually permit any type of promos to be posted on their web page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement provider knows what will happen when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can also receive something far more damaging, 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 undesirable programs, like Petsown popup virus may provoke a lot of troubles on your computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-ups may present you the banners, where you are offered to get another dubious program, or “a perfect anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the use of the last motto. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related banners are also exploited as a spreading method by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these ads, they can be clicked by someone 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 information loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

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

The guide of Petsown adware clearing includes 2 sections. First, we need to exterminate the malware, and afterwards deal with the effects of its activity. The elimination procedure is really easy, since it can be done even with using Microsoft Defender – security tool that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. However, because of its huge resources utilization, as well as some defects that can be critical for some categories of users, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its utilization is likely impossible. In addition, different trojan viruses are able to disable the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I would certainly recommend you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven security device that will surely exterminate the malware from your system and create an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s manage Petsown adware initially.

Removing Petsown 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 Petsown 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 ensure that your web browser will be connected the appropriate DNS while connecting to the website you want. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your desktop, then open it and fill it with the following text³:

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.

Nonetheless, there is one trouble that makes things a lot more difficult to restore, particularly without the anti-malware program. Most of adware versions that are used to show you the Petsown pop-up advertisements are adjusting the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your machine was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, huge 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 attempt 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.

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 Petsown Pop-ups?

Name: Petsown

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