Remove Sandgerl Virus — How to Fix Guide

Sandgerl pop-up alerts may appear out of the blue, covering the content of the website you explored or opening your web browser when you don’t want it to be opened.

Clicking on the Sandgerl advertisement may result in the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the tutorial of Sandgerl popups clearing in several ways, as well as examining your computer for additional viruses existence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Sandgerl 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.

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What are Sandgerl pop-ups?

Sandgerl popups are a result of adware action. Adware is a type of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which produces a significant volume of earnings for adware distributors. These ads might consist of explicit information, or have a link to harmful content/website, because adware maintainers have no reason to check the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their single target is cash.

Sandgerl push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a good, low-priced and really productive advertising solution¹. It allows the seller to link the buyers’ attention to their website, and the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the person will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to buy is provided at the online store he/she checked out previously with a 15% price cut, one will surely use this opportunity and purchase it. Considering the very small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing instrument is a much-loved thing amongst the advertising departments of huge internet retailers.

However, such a profitable system could not be missed by malware creators. Ability to show the popup advertisements by force to the victims of malware invasion is a perfect basis for evil-minded adjustments with the popup ads. And Sandgerl.com ads is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short info for the Sandgerl site

How have I got the Sandgerl virus?

There are a lot of methods of getting infected by the adware that create the Sandgerl popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software 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 oftentimes use the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of apps that are free, or even hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of software are risky, because it is extremely easy to include a Sandgerl 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.

Sandgerl popup virus may additionally be hidden in the advertisement somewhere on the strange site. Such websites are in most cases packed with intense and blinking advertisements, and their owners usually accept any type of promotions to be posted on their page. For this reason, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement contractor knows what will happen when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can likewise receive something a lot more hazardous, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious ads.

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Sandgerl popup virus may cause a lot of different troubles on your computer. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-up notifications may display you the banners, where you are offered to download one more unknown program, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the last slogun. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, can have spyware functions. 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 advertisements are also exploited as a distribution method by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these ads, they can be clicked by someone 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 solve it without data and money loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

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

The manual of Sandgerl adware clearing includes 2 sections. Initially, we need to exterminate the malware, and then deal with the results of its activity. The removal procedure is really easy, due to the fact that it may be done even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-malware software that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, because of its huge resources usage, along with some defects that can be pivotal for some types of users, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its usage is most likely impossible. What’s more, different trojan viruses are able to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is better to use the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I would certainly suggest you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven antivirus tool that will undoubtedly wipe out the viruses from your personal computer and also make an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s deal with Sandgerl adware initially.

Removing Sandgerl 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.

• 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.

• When the scan is over, you may choose the action for each detected virus. For all files of Sandgerl malware the default option is “Delete”. Press “Apply” to finish the malware removal.

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. 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. In the next screen, find the “Refresh Firefox” option :

After choosing this option, you will see the next message :

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 be connected the correct DNS while connecting to the website you need. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following text³:

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 things much more difficult to repair, particularly without the anti-malware program. A lot of adware versions that are used to show you the Sandgerl pop-up ads 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 collapse quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, but significant lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and after that it will be back to the normal, 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.

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.

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 Sandgerl Pop-ups?

Name: Sandgerl

Description: Sandgerl - 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 Sandgerl.com push notifications?” or “why do Sandgerl.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Sandgerl 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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1. More about pop-up advertisements on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware overview and the reasons why I recommend it for malware removal.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.