How to remove Pushmestar pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Pushmestar pop-up notifications can appear unexpectedly, covering the subject of the site you explored or opening your browser when you do not need it to be opened.

Clicking the Pushmestar promotion can cause the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the manual of Pushmestar popups clearing in several methods, and also examining your personal computer for additional viruses existence.

GridinSoft Anti-Malware Review
It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!
Removing Pushmestar 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.
Gridinsoft Anti-Malware 6-day trial available.
EULA | Privacy Policy | 10% Off Coupon
Subscribe to our Telegram channel to be the first to know about news and our exclusive materials on information security.

What are Pushmestar pop-ups?

Pushmestar popups are a result of adware action. Adware is a type of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a significant amount of profit for adware distributors. These promotions might have explicit material, or have a link to harmful content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the material they are going to show – their solitary target is money.

Pushmestar push notification

Pushmestar push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a very good, low-priced and extremely efficient advertising solution1. It makes it possible for the vendor to attach the buyers’ interest to their site, and the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. When the customer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he likes to purchase is available at the online shop he/she visited earlier with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this chance and purchase it. Considering the incredibly low cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing tool is a favourite thing amongst the advertising teams of huge internet sellers.

However, such a rewarding plan could not be missed by virus developers. Option to demonstrate the popup ads by force to the people of malware attack is an ideal basis for malevolent adjustments with the popup ads. And Pushmestar.com promotions is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a summary for the Pushmestar
SitePushmestar.com
HostingAS13335 Cloudflare, Inc.
United States, San Francisco
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address172.67.204.35
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorRockcloudarea, Top, Dipinced
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Pushmestar virus?

There are a plenty of methods of becoming contaminated by the adware that result in the Pushmestar popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware can also be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is supplied as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of users frequently work with the unreliable programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, a wide range of apps that are free, or even hacked programs. All of these types of applications are dangerous, due to the fact that it is extremely easy to integrate a Pushmestar malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Pushmestar popup malware can also be concealed in the ad somewhere on the odd web page. Such websites are generally full of colorful and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors usually permit any promotions to be published on their page. Therefore, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the ad provider realizes what will occur when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may also get something a lot more risky, 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 applications, like Pushmestar pop-up virus may provoke a lot of different problems on your computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-up notifications can show you the promotions, where you are offered to get another dubious application, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is usually spread under the last slogun. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also used as a spreading method by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these advertisements, they can be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without information loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

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

The manual of Pushmestar adware elimination includes 2 parts. First, we need to remove the malware, and then correct the results of its action. The elimination process is pretty easy, due to the fact that it can be done even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus tool that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, as a result of its large resources consumption, as well as some failures that can be serious for some groups of individuals, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its utilization is likely impossible. Additionally, a wide range of trojan viruses can turn off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d recommend you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus device that will certainly wipe out the viruses from your system and also create an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection function. But let’s take care of Pushmestar adware first.

Removing Pushmestar 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 Pushmestar 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 make sure that your web browser will connect the right DNS while connecting to the website you need. Make 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 a lot harder to repair, especially without the anti-malware software. Most of adware versions that are utilized to show you the Pushmestar pop-up ads are changing the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your system was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and then it will be back to the typical, till you attempt 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 Pushmestar Pop-ups?

Name: Pushmestar

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

Sending
User Review
3.25 (4 votes)
Comments Rating 0 (0 reviews)

References

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

Leave a Reply

Sending