Remove Protectutility.info Pop-up Ads — How to Fix Gude

Protectutility.info pop-up notices may appear unexpectedly, covering the post of the website you visited or opening your browser when you don’t need it to be opened.

Clicking on the Protectutility.info ad can trigger the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the manual of Protectutility.info popups clearing in a couple of methods, and also checking your personal computer for additional malware existence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Protectutility.info 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 Protectutility.info pop-ups?

Protectutility.info popups are an effect of adware presence. Adware is a kind of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which generates a major amount of income for adware suppliers. These ads might have explicit composition, or have a link to harmful content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the material they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

Protectutility.info push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is an excellent, low-priced and also extremely effective marketing tool¹. It permits the seller to attach the customers’ interest to their site, as well as the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to purchase. When the person will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to buy is offered at the online store he/she checked out previously with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this possibility and get it. Considering the incredibly small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing method is a favourite thing among the marketing departments of huge online retail stores.

However, such a profitable plan could not be missed by virus creators. Ability to show the popup ads forcibly to the victims of malware attack is an ideal basis for malevolent manipulations with the popup promotions. And Protectutility.info ads is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a details for the Protectutility.info site

How have I got the Protectutility.info virus?

There are a number of methods of becoming contaminated by the adware that trigger the Protectutility.info popups storm. A lion’s part of this virus incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software can also be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is presented as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of individuals regularly utilize the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, different apps that are free, or even hacked programs. Every one of these types of programs are unsafe, due to the fact that it is extremely simple to build in a Protectutility.info malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Protectutility.info popup malware can additionally be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the unusual website. Such websites are generally loaded with colorful and blinking ads, and their owners generally permit any kind of promotions to be published on their page. For this reason, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the ad provider knows what will happen when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can likewise get something far more threatening, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

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

Potentially undesirable programs, like Protectutility.info popup virus can provoke a variety of different problems on your computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-ups may display you the promotions, where you are offered to download one more strange program, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the use of the last slogun. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is very hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also exploited as a distribution way by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these banners, they may be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your PC – 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 anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Protectutility.info pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Protectutility.info adware elimination contains 2 parts. First, we need to get rid of the malware, and afterwards take care of the effects of its action. The removal procedure is quite simple, because it can be executed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – security program that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, because of its substantial resources utilization, along with some problems that may be critical for some types of individuals, Defender is oftentimes turned off by the users, so its use is likely impossible. What’s more, a variety of trojan viruses can turn off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d recommend you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven security device that will certainly eliminate the malware from your personal computer and also create an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection function. But let’s handle Protectutility.info adware first.

Removing Protectutility.info 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 Protectutility.info 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 make sure that your web browser will definitely connect the appropriate DNS while connecting to the website you want. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, then 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.

Nevertheless, there is one trouble that makes things a lot harder to restore, specifically without the anti-malware software. A lot of adware versions that are used to show you the Protectutility.info pop-up advertisements are adjusting the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your system was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, but large lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the normal, until you try 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.

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 Protectutility.info Pop-ups?

Name: Protectutility.info

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