Remove Protectpcscan Pop-up Ads — How to Fix Gude

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Protectpcscan pop-up notifications can appear out of the blue, covering the content of the website you explored or opening your web browser when you don’t desire it to be opened.

Clicking the Protectpcscan promotion can lead to the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the manual of Protectpcscan popups removal in several ways, and also examining your computer for other viruses presence.

GridinSoft Anti-Malware Review
It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!
Removing Protectpcscan 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.
Gridinsoft Anti-Malware 6-day trial available.
EULA | Privacy Policy | 10% Off Coupon
Subscribe to our Telegram channel to be the first to know about news and our exclusive materials on information security.

What are Protectpcscan pop-ups?

Protectpcscan popups are an effect of adware action. Adware is a sort of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which creates a large volume of profit for adware representatives. These ads might contain explicit material, or have a web link to malicious content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the web content they are going to show – their single target is money.

Protectpcscan push notification

Protectpcscan push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a good, low-cost and very efficient advertising tool1. It makes it possible for the seller to attach the buyers’ attention to their site, and the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. When the consumer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he likes to purchase is provided at the online shop he/she checked out earlier with a 15% discount, one will surely use this possibility and purchase it. Considering the incredibly small cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing instrument is a favourite thing amongst the advertising teams of huge online sellers.

Nevertheless, such a profitable plan could not be missed by virus developers. Potential to show the popup ads forcibly to the people of malware invasion is a perfect basis for evil-minded adjustments with the popup ads. And Protectpcscan.com promotions is among hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short info for the Protectpcscan site
Site Protectpcscan.com
Hosting AS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.
United States, San Francisco
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 188.114.96.3
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Notificationdailynews, News, Atkatj
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Protectpcscan virus?

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

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of people regularly use the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various tools that are free, or even hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of applications are dangerous, due to the fact that it is extremely easy to include a Protectpcscan 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.

Protectpcscan popup virus can additionally be hidden in the ad somewhere on the unusual site. Such web pages are in most cases loaded with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors usually permit any type of promos to be published on their web page. For this reason, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the ad provider realizes what will happen when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may likewise receive something a lot more dangerous, 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 Protectpcscan pop-up virus can cause a lot of problems on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-ups may show you the ads, where you are offered to download one more dubious program, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the last motto. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is very hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and fake antiviruses, popup-related ads are also exploited as a distribution method by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these promotions, they can be clicked by someone who also uses your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

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

The manual of Protectpcscan adware removal contains 2 sections. Initially, we need to eliminate the malware, and after that take care of the consequences of its activity. The removal process is very easy, since it can be performed even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-malware software that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. However, because of its large resources utilization, along with some errors that may be crucial for some groups of users, Defender is oftentimes disabled by the users, so its utilization is likely impossible. Furthermore, different trojan viruses are able to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I would certainly recommend you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus device that will undoubtedly wipe out the malware from your system and create an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s deal with Protectpcscan adware first.

Removing Protectpcscan 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 Protectpcscan 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 web browsers are reset, you need to ensure that your web browser will connect the correct DNS while connecting to the website you want. Create a text file named “hosts” on your 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.

Nonetheless, there is one trouble that makes the things much more difficult to repair, specifically without the anti-malware program. Most of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Protectpcscan pop-up promotions are modifying the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your computer was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse soon. In some cases, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and after that it will be back to the typical, till you attempt 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 Protectpcscan Pop-ups?

Name: Protectpcscan

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

Sending
User Review
3.25 (4 votes)
Comments Rating 0 (0 reviews)

References

  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.

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.

Leave a Reply

Sending