Remove Prime-scanner Pop-up Ads — How to Fix Gude

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Prime-scanner pop-up alerts may show up unexpectedly, covering the content of the page you explored or opening your browser when you do not wish it to be opened.

Clicking on the Prime-scanner promotion can trigger the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the tutorial of Prime-scanner popups clearing in several ways, and also examining your PC for additional viruses presence.

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What are Prime-scanner pop-ups?

Prime-scanner 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 promotions, which creates a significant amount of profit for adware distributors. These ads may have sometimes shocking content, or have a web link to harmful content/website, since adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their single target is cash.

Prime-scanner push notification

Prime-scanner push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a good, affordable and extremely productive marketing tool1. It enables the vendor to link the customers’ interest to their site, as well as the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the customer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to purchase is provided at the online shop he/she checked out earlier with a 15% price cut, one will surely use this chance and buy it. Taking into consideration the exceptionally small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing instrument is a favourite thing amidst the advertising teams of huge online retail stores.

Nevertheless, such a profitable system could not be missed by virus creators. Option to show the popup ads forcibly to the targets of malware attack is an ideal basis for malicious tricks with the popup advertisements. And Prime-scanner.com promotions is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short details for the Prime-scanner site
SitePrime-scanner.com
HostingAS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.
United States, San Francisco
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address172.67.183.122
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorNews, Movecappuccin, Profitfxprolivemarket
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Prime-scanner virus?

There are a lot of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that result in the Prime-scanner popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware can likewise be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is offered as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of users frequently work with the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of apps that are free of cost, or even hacked programs. All of these sorts of applications are risky, since it is very easy to build in a Prime-scanner 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.

Prime-scanner popup malware can likewise be concealed in the ad somewhere on the unusual website. Such websites are typically loaded with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their owners usually permit any promotions to be published on their page. For this reason, clicking on 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 unwanted programs, you can additionally get something much more damaging, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial 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 applications, like Prime-scanner popup virus may provoke a lot of problems on your personal computer. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-ups can display you the advertisements, where you are offered to download one more unknown application, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often distributed under the last slogun. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, can 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 fake antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also used as a spreading way by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these banners, they can be clicked by whoever who also makes use of 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 wipe out the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Prime-scanner pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Prime-scanner adware clearing consists of 2 sections. First, we need to exterminate the malware, and then fix the results of its activity. The elimination procedure is quite easy, due to the fact that it can be executed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware tool that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, as a result of its substantial resources usage, as well as some bugs that may be critical for some groups of individuals, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its use is probably impossible. Additionally, various trojan viruses are able to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security tool that will definitely eliminate the viruses from your personal computer and also create an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection function. But let’s manage Prime-scanner adware initially.

Removing Prime-scanner 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 Prime-scanner 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 make sure that your browser will connect the accurate DNS while connecting to the site you want. Create a text file named “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following lines3:

# 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.

Nevertheless, there is one issue that makes things much harder to repair, particularly without the anti-malware software. Most of adware versions that are utilized to show you the Prime-scanner pop-up ads are modifying the deep browser settings, 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 certainly collapse quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the typical, until you attempt to open settings once more.

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 Prime-scanner Pop-ups?

Name: Prime-scanner

Description: Prime-scanner - 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 Prime-scanner.com push notifications?” or “why do Prime-scanner.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Prime-scanner 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 ads on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and also the reasons why I suggest 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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