Remove Ptilselr Virus — How to Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Ptilselr pop-up alerts can show up unexpectedly, covering the subject of the page you checked or opening your web browser when you don’t desire it to be opened.

Clicking the Ptilselr ad can lead to the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guideline of Ptilselr popups clearing in several ways, as well as inspecting your computer for extra viruses presence.

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What are Ptilselr pop-ups?

Ptilselr popups are an effect of adware presence. Adware is a kind of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which creates a substantial amount of income for adware suppliers. These advertisements may contain explicit material, or have a link to harmful content/website, because adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the content they are going to show – their single target is money.

Ptilselr push notification

Ptilselr push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a good, low-priced and very efficient advertising instrument1. It permits the vendor to attach the buyers’ interest to their website, and the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish 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 previously with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this opportunity and buy it. Taking into consideration the extremely low price for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing tool is a favourite thing among the advertising departments of big internet stores.

Nevertheless, such a rewarding scheme could not be missed by virus developers. Option to demonstrate the popup ads forcibly to the people of malware invasion is a great basis for malevolent manipulations with the popup promotions. And Ptilselr.com advertisements is among hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short details for the Ptilselr site
SitePtilselr.com
HostingAS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.
United States, San Francisco
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address172.64.100.26
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorRoveks, Rankcaptcha, News
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Ptilselr virus?

There are a plenty of ways of getting infected by the adware that result in the Ptilselr popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware may also be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is presented as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of individuals frequently make use of the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, different tools that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of programs are dangerous, because it is very easy to build in a Ptilselr 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.

Ptilselr popup malware can also be hidden in the ad somewhere on the strange web page. Such websites are in most cases packed with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors generally approve any type of promos to be published on their web page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the ad contractor knows what will happen when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may likewise receive something far more unsafe, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable programs, like Ptilselr popup virus can initiate a variety of troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-up notifications can show you the promotions, where you are offered to get one more dubious application, or “a perfect anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often distributed under the last motto. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also used as a distribution method by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these promotions, they may 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 deal with it without data loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

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

The guide of Ptilselr adware removal includes 2 sections. First, we need to remove the malware, and after that take care of the effects of its activity. The removal procedure is really easy, since it can be executed even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-virus software that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, due to its significant resources usage, along with some errors that may be serious for some kinds of individuals, Defender is frequently turned off by the users, so its utilization is likely impossible. Furthermore, a wide range of trojan viruses are able to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I’d suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware tool that will definitely eliminate the viruses from your system and create an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s take care of Ptilselr adware first.

Removing Ptilselr 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 Ptilselr 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 browser will connect the accurate DNS while connecting to the site you need. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’s 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.

However, there is one issue that makes the things much harder to repair, specifically without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Ptilselr pop-up ads are changing the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your machine was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, but large lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and after that it will be back to the typical, until 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 Ptilselr Pop-ups?

Name: Ptilselr

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

  1. More about pop-up ads on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware overview and also the reasons why I advise 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.

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