Remove Prenow.net Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Prenow.net pop-up notifications can appear unexpectedly, covering the subject of the page you explored or opening your browser when you don’t desire it to be opened.

Clicking the Prenow.net advertisement may lead to the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guideline of Prenow.net popups clearing in multiple methods, and also inspecting your personal computer for other viruses existence.

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What are Prenow.net pop-ups?

Prenow.net popups are a result of adware presence. Adware is a sort of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which generates a significant amount of revenue for adware distributors. These ads might contain explicit content, or have a web link to harmful content/website, since adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the content they are going to show – their solitary target is money.

Prenow.net push notification

Prenow.net push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a good, low-cost and very effective advertising instrument1. It allows the vendor to attach the buyers’ interest to their website, and the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they want to purchase. When the person will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to buy is offered at the online store he/she visited previously with a 15% price cut, one will certainly use this opportunity and purchase it. Considering the extremely low cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing tool is a much-loved thing among the advertising teams of big online retailers.

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

Here is a summary for the Prenow.net site
Site Prenow.net
Hosting AS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.
United States, San Francisco
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 172.66.40.78
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Grey, Grey, Fivehot
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Prenow.net virus?

There are a plenty of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that create the Prenow.net popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software may also be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is provided as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of people often make use of the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, a wide range of apps that are free, or even hacked programs. All of these types of programs are dangerous, because it is very simple to integrate a Prenow.net malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Prenow.net popup malware may likewise be hidden in the ad somewhere on the unusual web page. Such sites are typically loaded with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their owners often accept any kind of promotions to be published on their web page. Hence, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement contractor knows what will happen when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may also receive something far more unsafe, 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

Potentially undesirable programs, like Prenow.net popup virus may provoke a variety of troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-up notifications can present you the promotions, where you are offered to download another dubious application, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the use of the last slogun. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is quite hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also chosen as a distribution method by various 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 banners, they can be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data and money loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Prenow.net pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Prenow.net adware elimination includes 2 parts. Initially, we need to deal with the malware, and after that take care of the consequences of its action. The elimination procedure is pretty easy, due to the fact that it may be executed even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-virus program that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, because of its significant resources consumption, as well as some defects that may be pivotal for some groups of individuals, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its utilization is most likely impossible. Moreover, a wide range of trojan viruses can disable the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus tool that will surely wipe out the malware from your personal computer and also create an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s take care of Prenow.net adware initially.

Removing Prenow.net 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 Prenow.net 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 browsers are reset, you need to ensure that your browser will definitely be connected the proper DNS while connecting to the website you want. Create a text file named “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following content3:

# 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.

However, there is one issue that makes the things a lot harder to restore, especially without the anti-malware program. Most of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Prenow.net pop-up promotions are altering 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 collapse soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and then it will be back to the typical, up until you try 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.

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 Prenow.net Pop-ups?

Name: Prenow.net

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