Remove Protect-tool.xyz Pop-up Ads — How to Fix Gude

Protect-tool.xyz pop-up alerts may show up unexpectedly, covering the post of the website you explored or opening your browser when you do not want it to be opened.

Clicking the Protect-tool.xyz advertisement can trigger the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guide of Protect-tool.xyz popups removal in multiple methods, as well as checking your personal computer for additional malware presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Protect-tool.xyz 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 Protect-tool.xyz pop-ups?

Protect-tool.xyz popups are an effect of adware action. Adware is a kind of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which produces a substantial amount of income for adware representatives. These promotions might have explicit content, or have a web link to malevolent content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the content they are going to show – their single target is cash.

Protect-tool.xyz push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a very good, low-cost and extremely productive advertising method¹. It allows the seller to link the buyers’ interest to their website, as well as the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the customer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to purchase is available at the online shop he/she visited previously with a 15% discount, one will definitely use this opportunity and buy it. Considering the extremely small cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising tool is a favorite thing amidst the advertising departments of huge internet retailers.

Nonetheless, such a successful system could not be missed by malware developers. Option to show the popup ads forcibly to the victims of malware invasion is an ideal basis for malicious manipulations with the popup promotions. And Protect-tool.xyz ads is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a summary for the Protect-tool.xyz

How have I got the Protect-tool.xyz virus?

There are a lot of ways of becoming infected by the adware that trigger the Protect-tool.xyz popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software may likewise be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is presented as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of users frequently use the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various apps that are free, or even hacked programs. Every one of these types of software are unsafe, since it is extremely simple to integrate a Protect-tool.xyz malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Protect-tool.xyz popup virus may also be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the strange site. Such web pages are typically loaded with bright and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors typically permit any kind of promotions to be posted on their web page. For this reason, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement provider realizes what will happen when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can likewise receive something far more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious promotions.

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

Potentially undesirable programs, like Protect-tool.xyz pop-up virus can initiate a variety of problems on your PC. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-up notifications can display you the advertisements, where you are offered to get one more strange application, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the use of the last slogun. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related banners are also exploited as a spreading method by different trojan viruses, for instance – 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 interacting with these promotions, they may be clicked by someone who also makes use of your computer – 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 wipe out the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Protect-tool.xyz pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Protect-tool.xyz adware removal consists of 2 sections. Initially, we need to deal with the malware, and then deal with the results of its action. The elimination procedure is very easy, because it can be done even with making use of Microsoft Defender – security program that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. However, due to its huge resources utilization, as well as some defects that can be critical for some categories of users, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its use is most likely impossible. What’s more, different trojan viruses can shut off the embedded antivirus. It is better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I would certainly suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven security device that will certainly erase the malware from your computer and also create an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s handle Protect-tool.xyz adware first.

Removing Protect-tool.xyz 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 Protect-tool.xyz 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 make sure that your web browser will connect the accurate DNS while connecting to the site you need. Create a text file named “hosts” on your computer’s 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 the things a lot harder to fix, especially without the anti-malware program. A lot of adware versions that are used to show you the Protect-tool.xyz pop-up promotions are changing the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your system was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but significant 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 one more time.

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 Protect-tool.xyz Pop-ups?

Name: Protect-tool.xyz

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