Remove Play-Bar-Search Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Play-Bar-Search pop-up notices may appear unexpectedly, covering the content of the website you checked or opening your web browser when you do not want it to be opened.

Clicking on the Play-Bar-Search advertisement may result in the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guideline of Play-Bar-Search popups removal in several manners, as well as examining your computer for additional malware presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Play-Bar-Search 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 Play-Bar-Search pop-ups?

Play-Bar-Search popups are an effect of adware presence. Adware is a type of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which generates a substantial volume of income for adware suppliers. These advertisements may include explicit composition, or have a link to harmful content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

Play-Bar-Search push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a good, affordable and also extremely successful marketing method¹. It allows the vendor to link the customers’ attention to their website, and the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the consumer will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to buy is offered at the online store he/she checked out previously with a 15% price cut, one will certainly use this opportunity and buy it. Considering the incredibly low price for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing instrument is a favourite thing amongst the advertising departments of large internet retailers.

Nevertheless, such a rewarding strategy could not be missed by virus developers. Potential to demonstrate the popup advertisements by force to the people of malware attack is an ideal basis for malicious tricks with the popup advertisements. And Play-bar-search.com ads is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a summary for the Play-Bar-Search

How have I got the Play-Bar-Search virus?

There are a plenty of ways of getting infected by the adware that create the Play-Bar-Search popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware can also be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is supplied as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of users regularly use the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, various tools that are free, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of software are unsafe, due to the fact that it is very simple to integrate a Play-Bar-Search 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.

Play-Bar-Search popup malware may additionally be hidden in the ad somewhere on the strange site. Such websites are typically full of bright and blinking advertisements, and their owners usually permit any 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 occur when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may additionally get something far more hazardous, like ransomware or coin miner; the large 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 applications, like Play-Bar-Search pop-up virus may provoke a wide range of problems on your PC. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-ups may show you the promotions, where you are offered to download one more dubious application, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often spread with the use of the last slogun. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, can have spyware functions. 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 fake antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also used as a distribution way by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these promotions, they can be clicked by someone who also uses your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data and money loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Play-Bar-Search pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Play-Bar-Search adware removal contains 2 parts. First, we need to get rid of the malware, and afterwards repair the consequences of its action. The removal process is quite simple, due to the fact that it may be done even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus software that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, because of its substantial resources consumption, along with some problems that may be pivotal for some categories of users, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its use is probably impossible. Additionally, a wide range of trojan viruses can disable the embedded antivirus. It is better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d advise you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven anti-malware tool that will surely exterminate the viruses from your system and also make an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s manage Play-Bar-Search adware initially.

Removing Play-Bar-Search 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 Play-Bar-Search 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 browser will definitely be connected the right DNS while connecting to the site you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following lines³:

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 issue that makes things much harder to restore, especially without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware variants that are used to show you the Play-Bar-Search pop-up ads are altering the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your machine was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the typical, up until you attempt to open settings once 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 Play-Bar-Search Pop-ups?

Name: Play-Bar-Search

Description: Play-Bar-Search - 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 Play-bar-search.com push notifications?” or “why do Play-bar-search.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Play-Bar-Search 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 advertisements on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and the reasons why I recommend it for malware removal.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.