Picpushes Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Picpushes pop-up notifications can show up unexpectedly, covering the post of the page you checked or opening your web browser when you do not want it to be opened.

Clicking on the Picpushes promotion may result in the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guideline of Picpushes popups clearing in several manners, and also inspecting your personal computer for additional malware presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Picpushes 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 Picpushes pop-ups?

Picpushes popups are a result of adware action. Adware is a sort of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which produces a substantial volume of profit for adware suppliers. These advertisements might consist of sometimes shocking material, or have a link to harmful content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

Picpushes push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a very good, low-priced and also very productive marketing tool¹. It allows the vendor to attach the buyers’ attention to their site, and the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the customer will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to purchase is available at the online store he/she checked out earlier with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this chance and purchase it. Considering the incredibly low price for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing tool is a much-loved thing amidst the advertising teams of large online retail stores.

Nevertheless, such a rewarding plan could not be missed by virus creators. Option to demonstrate the popup ads by force to the people of malware invasion is a perfect basis for evil-minded adjustments with the popup promotions. And Picpushes.com promotions is among hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short summary for the Picpushes

How have I got the Picpushes virus?

There are a plenty of ways of becoming contaminated by the adware that trigger the Picpushes popups tornado. A lion’s part of this computer virus incidents is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware can also be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is delivered as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of people regularly utilize the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, various apps that are free, or even hacked programs. All of these sorts of software are risky, because it is quite easy to integrate a Picpushes 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.

Picpushes popup virus can also be hidden in the advertisement somewhere on the odd web page. Such websites are in most cases filled with bright and blinking advertisements, and their owners typically accept any type of promos to be posted on their web page. For this reason, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement provider realizes what will happen when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can also receive something much more threatening, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Picpushes popup virus may provoke a lot of problems on your PC. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-ups may display you the ads, where you are offered to download one more unknown program, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the use of the last motto. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is very hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and fake antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also exploited as a distribution method by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these ads, they may be clicked by someone who also makes use of your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without information loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

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

The guide of Picpushes adware removal includes 2 sections. First, we need to exterminate the malware, and afterwards fix the results of its activity. The elimination process is pretty easy, due to the fact that it can be done even with using Microsoft Defender – security software that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, as a result of its large resources utilization, as well as some bugs that may be critical for some kinds of users, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its use is probably impossible. Furthermore, a wide range of trojan viruses are capable to disable the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I would certainly recommend you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven antivirus tool that will undoubtedly erase the malware from your PC and also make an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection function. But let’s handle Picpushes adware initially.

Removing Picpushes 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 Picpushes 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 ensure that your browser will definitely be connected the correct DNS while connecting to the website you need. Create a text file named “hosts” on your desktop, after that 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.

However, there is one issue that makes things much more difficult to fix, particularly without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware variations that are used to show you the Picpushes pop-up advertisements are modifying 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 certainly collapse quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and after that it will be back to the typical, 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 Picpushes Pop-ups?

Name: Picpushes

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