Remove Protectpcvault Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Protectpcvault pop-up notices may show up out of the blue, covering the post of the website you visited or opening your web browser when you do not need it to be opened.

Clicking on the Protectpcvault advertisement can lead to the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the manual of Protectpcvault popups clearing in several ways, and also inspecting your computer for other malware presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Protectpcvault 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 Protectpcvault pop-ups?

Protectpcvault popups are a consequence of adware action. Adware is a type of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which generates a major volume of profit for adware representatives. These promotions may include explicit content, or have a web link to malicious content/website, because adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the material they are going to show – their solitary target is cash.

Protectpcvault push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a very good, cheap and very productive advertising instrument¹. It enables the vendor to link the buyers’ interest to their site, as well as the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the consumer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to buy is available at the online store he/she checked out earlier with a 15% discount, one will definitely use this possibility and buy it. Taking into consideration the extremely small cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing instrument is a favorite thing amidst the marketing teams of big internet stores.

However, such a successful plan could not be missed by malware developers. Ability to demonstrate the popup ads forcibly to the targets of malware attack is an ideal basis for malicious adjustments with the popup ads. And Protectpcvault.com advertisements is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short details for the Protectpcvault site

How have I got the Protectpcvault virus?

There are a plenty of ways of becoming contaminated by the adware that trigger the Protectpcvault popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus incidents is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware can also be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is provided as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of individuals oftentimes utilize the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different apps that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. All of these sorts of applications are risky, since it is very easy to build in a Protectpcvault malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Protectpcvault popup virus can additionally be hidden in the advertisement somewhere on the unusual website. Such web pages are typically filled with colorful and blinking ads, and their owners usually permit any promotions to be posted on their web page. Thus, 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 undesirable programs, you may also receive something a lot more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the big 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 applications, like Protectpcvault popup virus may initiate a variety of troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-ups may present you the advertisements, where you are offered to get another dubious application, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the last motto. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also chosen as a distribution way by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these advertisements, they can be clicked by whoever who also uses your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can 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 Protectpcvault pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Protectpcvault adware elimination consists of 2 parts. First, we need to get rid of the malware, and after that deal with the consequences of its action. The elimination procedure is really easy, because it can be performed even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-virus program that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, as a result of its large resources usage, as well as some errors that may be pivotal for some categories of individuals, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its utilization is probably impossible. Furthermore, a wide range of trojan viruses are capable to shut off 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 security tool that will undoubtedly remove the malware from your personal computer and create an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s handle Protectpcvault adware initially.

Removing Protectpcvault 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 Protectpcvault 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 ensure that your web browser will definitely connect the right 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 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.

Nonetheless, there is one trouble that makes the things a lot more difficult to fix, especially without the anti-malware program. A lot of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Protectpcvault pop-up advertisements are modifying the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your computer was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the typical, until you attempt to open settings once 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.

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 Protectpcvault Pop-ups?

Name: Protectpcvault

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