Remove Potnormal Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Potnormal pop-up notices can show up out of the blue, covering the content of the page you went to or opening your web browser when you don’t wish it to be opened.

Clicking on the Potnormal ad may result in the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the manual of Potnormal popups removal in various methods, and also checking your personal computer for other viruses existence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Potnormal 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 Potnormal pop-ups?

Potnormal popups are an outcome of adware presence. Adware is a kind of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a major amount of income for adware representatives. These ads may consist of explicit content, or have a link to malevolent content/website, because adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the content they are going to show – their solitary target is money.

Potnormal push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a very good, cheap and very efficient advertising instrument¹. It permits the vendor to link the buyers’ interest to their site, as well as the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the consumer will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he likes to buy is offered at the online shop he/she saw earlier with a 15% discount, one will definitely use this possibility and purchase it. Considering the very small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing instrument is a much-loved thing amongst the marketing teams of large internet stores.

However, such a rewarding system could not be missed by virus creators. Ability to demonstrate the popup ads forcibly to the targets of malware invasion is an ideal basis for malevolent adjustments with the popup advertisements. And Potnormal.com promotions is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short summary for the Potnormal site

How have I got the Potnormal virus?

There are a number of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that lead to the Potnormal popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software may additionally be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is delivered as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of individuals often make use of the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of tools that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of software are risky, because it is quite easy to integrate a Potnormal malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Potnormal popup virus may also be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the odd website. Such websites are generally full of bright and blinking ads, and their proprietors typically accept any promos to be placed on their web page. Thus, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the ad contractor realizes what will occur when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may likewise get something much more hazardous, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

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

Potentially unwanted programs, like Potnormal popup virus can initiate a variety of problems on your PC. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-up notifications may display you the advertisements, where you are offered to download one more unknown program, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the last motto. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related banners are also exploited as a spreading method by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these banners, they may be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

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

The tutorial of Potnormal adware removal includes 2 sections. Initially, we need to deal with the malware, and afterwards correct the results of its action. The removal procedure is quite simple, due to the fact that it can be performed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – security software that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. However, due to its substantial resources usage, along with some failures that may be serious for some groups of individuals, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its utilization is most likely impossible. Furthermore, a variety of trojan viruses are capable to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven security tool that will definitely remove the malware from your system and create an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s take care of Potnormal adware first.

Removing Potnormal 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 Potnormal 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 titled “hosts” on your 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 a lot more difficult to restore, particularly without the anti-malware program. A lot of adware versions that are used to show you the Potnormal pop-up ads are adjusting the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your PC was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but large lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and then it will be back to the normal, up until you try 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 Potnormal Pop-ups?

Name: Potnormal

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