How to remove Ptonnerven pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Ptonnerven pop-up notices may appear unexpectedly, covering the content of the website you went to or opening your browser when you don’t wish it to be opened.

Clicking the Ptonnerven promotion can cause the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the tutorial of Ptonnerven popups clearing in a couple of manners, and also examining your computer for extra viruses existence.

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What are Ptonnerven pop-ups?

Ptonnerven popups are a result of adware action. Adware is a kind of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which produces a massive volume of profit for adware representatives. These promotions might have explicit composition, or have a web link to malicious content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the web content they are going to show – their solitary target is cash.

Ptonnerven push notification

Ptonnerven push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is an excellent, affordable and extremely efficient marketing method1. It makes it possible for the seller to attach the customers’ attention to their site, and the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. When the customer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to buy is provided at the online shop he/she visited previously with a 15% discount, one will definitely use this possibility and purchase it. Considering the very low cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing tool is a favourite thing amongst the marketing teams of huge online stores.

However, such a profitable strategy could not be missed by malware creators. Option to show the popup ads by force to the victims of malware invasion is an ideal basis for malevolent tricks with the popup advertisements. And Ptonnerven.com ads is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short details for the Ptonnerven
SitePtonnerven.com
HostingAS14618 Amazon.com, Inc.
United States, Ashburn
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address107.22.28.167
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorAugutabery, Bunnyvideo, Adblockfast
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Ptonnerven virus?

There are a plenty of ways of getting infected by the adware that trigger the Ptonnerven popups storm. A lion’s part of this virus instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware can additionally be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is delivered as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of people frequently make use of the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of utilities that are free, and even hacked programs. All of these sorts of programs are risky, since it is extremely simple to build in a Ptonnerven 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.

Ptonnerven popup virus can additionally be hidden in the ad somewhere on the unusual site. Such web pages are typically loaded with bright and blinking advertisements, and their owners typically approve any type of promos to be published on their page. Thus, 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 unwanted programs, you can likewise get something a lot more damaging, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious ads.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially unwanted applications, like Ptonnerven popup virus may initiate a variety of different troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-up notifications may show you the advertisements, where you are offered to get one more dubious application, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is often spread under the last slogun. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is very hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related ads are also used as a distribution method by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these promotions, they can be clicked by whoever who also makes use of 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 information loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

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

The tutorial of Ptonnerven adware clearing includes 2 sections. First, we need to eliminate the malware, and after that correct the results of its action. The elimination process is quite easy, because it can be executed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware tool that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, as a result of its large resources utilization, along with some defects that may be critical for some kinds of users, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. What’s more, a wide range of trojan viruses can turn off the embedded antivirus. It is better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d recommend 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 manage Ptonnerven adware first.

Removing Ptonnerven 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 Ptonnerven 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 browsers are reset, you need to ensure that your browser will connect the accurate DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Make a text file named “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following text3:

# 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 issue that makes the things a lot more difficult to restore, especially without the anti-malware program. A lot of adware versions that are used to show you the Ptonnerven pop-up promotions are modifying the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your system was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and afterwards it will be back to the typical, up until you try 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.

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 Ptonnerven Pop-ups?

Name: Ptonnerven

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

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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