Remove Screenauto Virus — How to Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Screenauto pop-up alerts may appear out of the blue, covering the material of the page you went to or opening your web browser when you don’t want it to be opened.

Clicking the Screenauto ad can trigger the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the tutorial of Screenauto popups clearing in a couple of manners, and also examining your system for other malware presence.

GridinSoft Anti-Malware Review
It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!
Removing Screenauto 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 Screenauto pop-ups?

Screenauto popups are an outcome of adware presence. Adware is a type of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a massive volume of revenue for adware distributors. These advertisements might consist of sometimes shocking material, or have a link to malicious content/website, because adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the content they are going to show – their single target is cash.

Screenauto push notification

Screenauto push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is an excellent, low-priced and extremely effective advertising instrument1. It makes it possible for the vendor to link the customers’ interest to their website, as well as the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the customer will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he likes to buy is available at the online shop he/she saw earlier with a 15% price cut, one will surely use this chance and get it. Taking into consideration the exceptionally small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing method is a much-loved thing amongst the marketing departments of big internet retail stores.

Nonetheless, such a rewarding plan could not be missed by malware developers. Option to demonstrate the popup ads forcibly to the victims of malware attack is an excellent basis for malevolent tricks with the popup promotions. And Screenauto.xyz advertisements is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short summary for the Screenauto site
Site Screenauto.xyz
Hosting AS15317 Serverel Inc.
United States, San Jose
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 173.214.240.15
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior News, Welovetop, Evoground
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Screenauto virus?

There are a huge amount of methods of getting infected by the adware that create the Screenauto popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software may likewise be downloaded from the main site, and the adware is provided as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of users frequently utilize the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various tools that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. All of these kinds of applications are dangerous, because it is very easy to include a Screenauto 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.

Screenauto popup virus can likewise be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the odd website. Such websites are generally loaded with bright and blinking ads, and their owners usually permit any type of promotions to be published on their web page. Therefore, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement contractor realizes what will occur when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may additionally get something a lot more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious promotions.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable programs, like Screenauto popup virus can cause a variety of different troubles on your computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-ups may present you the promotions, where you are offered to get another unknown application, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is often spread under the last slogun. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is very hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and fake antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also used as a distribution way by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these promotions, they may be clicked by someone who also uses your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data and money loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

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

The guide of Screenauto adware removal contains 2 parts. Initially, we need to exterminate the malware, and then repair the consequences of its activity. The removal procedure is quite simple, since it may be performed even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-malware tool that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, due to its large resources utilization, as well as some bugs that may be serious for some types of individuals, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its usage is likely impossible. What’s more, a variety of trojan viruses can disable the embedded antivirus. It is better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I would certainly recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security tool that will surely wipe out the viruses from your personal computer and also make an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s manage Screenauto adware first.

Removing Screenauto 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 Screenauto 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 make sure that your web browser will be connected the correct DNS while connecting to the web page you need. Make a text file named “hosts” on your desktop, then 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.

Nonetheless, there is one problem that makes the things a lot more difficult to fix, particularly without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware versions that are utilized to show you the Screenauto pop-up ads are modifying the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your computer was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the normal, until you attempt 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 Screenauto Pop-ups?

Name: Screenauto

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

Leave a Reply

Sending