Remove Pushcleantools Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Pushcleantools pop-up notices can show up out of the blue, covering the material of the page you explored or opening your browser when you do not want it to be opened.

Clicking the Pushcleantools ad can lead to the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the manual of Pushcleantools popups clearing in several methods, as well as checking your personal computer for other malware presence.

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What are Pushcleantools pop-ups?

Pushcleantools popups are a result of adware presence. Adware is a type of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a significant volume of earnings for adware suppliers. These promotions might have sometimes shocking material, or have a link to malevolent content/website, since adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is cash.

Pushcleantools push notification

Pushcleantools push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a very good, low-priced and also very productive advertising instrument1. It enables the seller to attach the customers’ interest to their site, as well as the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the person will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to buy is available at the online store he/she saw previously with a 15% price cut, one will surely use this opportunity and buy it. Considering the very small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing instrument is a favorite thing amidst the advertising teams of huge internet stores.

Nonetheless, such a successful system could not be missed by malware developers. Option to show the popup ads by force to the victims of malware attack is an excellent basis for malicious tricks with the popup promotions. And Pushcleantools.com promotions is among hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short details for the Pushcleantools
Site Pushcleantools.com
Hosting AS27257 Webair Internet Development Company Inc.
United States, New York City
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 173.239.8.164
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Nevertherekay, Totalnicefeed, Spotcontent
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Pushcleantools virus?

There are a huge amount of ways of becoming contaminated by the adware that cause the Pushcleantools popups tornado. A lion’s part of this computer virus cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software can likewise be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is offered as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of users frequently utilize the uncertain programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, a wide range of tools that are free, and even hacked programs. All of these sorts of software are unsafe, due to the fact that it is very easy to build in a Pushcleantools 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.

Pushcleantools popup virus can also be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the strange site. Such web pages are in most cases packed with bright and blinking advertisements, and their owners usually approve any promotions to be published on their page. Therefore, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad provider realizes what will happen when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can additionally get something far more unsafe, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially unwanted applications, like Pushcleantools pop-up virus may initiate a wide range of problems on your computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-up notifications may show you the banners, where you are offered to get one more dubious program, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually spread under the last motto. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and fake antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also exploited as a spreading way by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these ads, they can be clicked by whoever who also makes use of 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 and money loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

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

The tutorial of Pushcleantools adware clearing includes 2 sections. First, we need to exterminate the malware, and then fix the effects of its action. The removal process is pretty simple, because it can be executed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – security software that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. However, as a result of its substantial resources utilization, as well as some bugs that can be serious for some kinds of users, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its use is likely impossible. In addition, different trojan viruses are capable to disable the embedded antivirus. It is far better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d suggest you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware device that will surely remove the malware from your computer and make an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection function. But let’s deal with Pushcleantools adware initially.

Removing Pushcleantools 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 Pushcleantools 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 web browser will connect the correct DNS while connecting to the web page you need. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your 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 things a lot harder to restore, specifically without the anti-malware software. A lot of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Pushcleantools pop-up advertisements are altering the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your PC was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the typical, 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.

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 Pushcleantools Pop-ups?

Name: Pushcleantools

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

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