Protectnscan Ads Removal Guide — How to Fix It?

Protectnscan pop-up notices can show up unexpectedly, covering the content of the website you checked or opening your browser when you do not wish it to be opened.

Clicking the Protectnscan ad may result in the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guide of Protectnscan popups clearing in several methods, and also inspecting your system for extra malware existence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Protectnscan 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 Protectnscan pop-ups?

Protectnscan popups are an outcome of adware activity. Adware is a type of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a significant amount of revenue for adware distributors. These advertisements might consist of explicit composition, or have a link to malevolent content/website, since adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the content they are going to show – their single target is money.

Protectnscan push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is an excellent, affordable and very successful marketing solution¹. It makes it possible for the vendor to attach the buyers’ interest to their site, and the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the customer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to purchase is available at the online store he/she checked out earlier with a 15% price cut, one will certainly use this opportunity and purchase it. Taking into consideration the exceptionally low cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing tool is a favourite thing among the advertising teams of big internet retailers.

Nevertheless, such a rewarding system could not be missed by virus developers. Ability to show the popup advertisements by force to the victims of malware invasion is a perfect basis for malevolent adjustments with the popup advertisements. And Protectnscan.com ads is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a info for the Protectnscan

How have I got the Protectnscan virus?

There are a lot of methods of becoming contaminated by the adware that result in the Protectnscan popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus instances is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software may additionally be downloaded from the main site, and the adware is offered as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of individuals frequently utilize the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of apps that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. Every one of these types of programs are dangerous, since it is quite easy to build in a Protectnscan malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Protectnscan popup malware can also be concealed in the ad somewhere on the strange website. Such web pages are typically loaded with bright and blinking ads, and their proprietors often approve any promotions to be posted on their web page. Therefore, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement provider knows what will occur when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can likewise get something much more unsafe, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious ads.

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

Potentially unwanted programs, like Protectnscan pop-up virus may initiate a lot of problems on your computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications can show you the ads, where you are offered to download one more dubious application, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the use of the last slogun. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is very hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related banners are also chosen as a spreading method by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these advertisements, they can be clicked by someone who also makes use of your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

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

The manual of Protectnscan adware clearing contains 2 parts. First, we need to remove the malware, and after that fix the consequences of its action. The elimination task is quite simple, because it can be executed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus program that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, as a result of its large resources utilization, as well as some problems that can be crucial for some types of individuals, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. In addition, a wide range of trojan viruses have the ability to disable the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I would certainly suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven anti-malware device that will surely erase the viruses from your computer and create an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s manage Protectnscan adware first.

Removing Protectnscan 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 Protectnscan 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 web browser will connect the correct DNS while connecting to the website you need. Create a text file titled “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 repair, particularly without the anti-malware software. Most of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Protectnscan pop-up ads are changing the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your PC was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the typical, 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 Protectnscan Pop-ups?

Name: Protectnscan

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