How to remove Rockstarsale pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Rockstarsale pop-up notifications may appear out of the blue, covering the subject of the website you explored or opening your web browser when you don’t desire it to be opened.

Clicking on the Rockstarsale ad may cause the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the manual of Rockstarsale popups clearing in a couple of ways, and also examining your system for additional viruses presence.

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What are Rockstarsale pop-ups?

Rockstarsale popups are an outcome of adware presence. Adware is a sort of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which produces a significant volume of profit for adware representatives. These ads might have explicit material, or have a web link to malicious content/website, because adware maintainers have no reason to check the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is cash.

Rockstarsale push notification

Rockstarsale push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a good, affordable and very efficient marketing tool1. It permits the vendor to link the buyers’ interest to their website, as well as the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the customer will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to purchase is provided at the online store he/she visited earlier with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this opportunity and get it. Taking into consideration the extremely low cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing tool is a favourite thing among the marketing departments of huge internet sellers.

However, such a profitable plan could not be missed by virus developers. Potential to demonstrate the popup ads by force to the people of malware invasion is an ideal basis for malevolent manipulations with the popup promotions. And Rockstarsale2.xyz ads is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short info for the Rockstarsale site
SiteRockstarsale2.xyz
HostingAS15317 Serverel Inc.
United States, Contra Costa Centre
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address173.214.240.15
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorBigclik, Gate8, News
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Rockstarsale virus?

There are a huge amount of ways of getting infected by the adware that lead to the Rockstarsale popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware may likewise be downloaded from the main site, and the adware is offered as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of individuals frequently use the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different utilities that are free of cost, or even hacked programs. All of these kinds of software are dangerous, because it is quite simple to integrate a Rockstarsale malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Rockstarsale popup virus may likewise be concealed in the ad somewhere on the strange site. Such sites are usually full of colorful and blinking ads, and their proprietors generally accept any promos to be posted on their web page. Thus, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad provider knows what will occur when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can likewise receive something far more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious promotions.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially unwanted applications, like Rockstarsale popup virus can initiate a wide range of problems on your computer. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-up notifications may show you the promotions, where you are offered to download another strange application, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is often spread with the use of the last slogun. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is very hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also exploited as a spreading way by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these banners, they can be clicked by someone who also uses your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without information loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

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

The manual of Rockstarsale adware elimination contains 2 sections. First, we need to eliminate the malware, and after that deal with the results of its action. The removal process is really simple, due to the fact that it can be done even with the use of Microsoft Defender – security tool that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, as a result of its substantial resources consumption, along with some failures that can be critical for some kinds of individuals, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its use is probably impossible. Additionally, different trojan viruses can switch off the embedded antivirus. It is better to use the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I would certainly advise you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security device that will surely remove the viruses from your PC and also make an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s manage Rockstarsale adware first.

Removing Rockstarsale 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 Rockstarsale 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 web browser will definitely be connected the proper DNS while connecting to the site you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following content3:

# 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.

Nevertheless, there is one problem that makes the things much harder to restore, especially without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Rockstarsale pop-up promotions are changing the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your PC was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and after that it will be back to the normal, till you attempt to open settings once more.

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 Rockstarsale Pop-ups?

Name: Rockstarsale

Description: Rockstarsale - 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 Rockstarsale2.xyz push notifications?” or “why do Rockstarsale2.xyz pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Rockstarsale 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 suggest 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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