How to remove Search-fine pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Search-fine pop-up alerts may show up unexpectedly, covering the material of the website you went to or opening your web browser when you don’t wish it to be opened.

Clicking the Search-fine promotion may trigger the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the manual of Search-fine popups clearing in various manners, as well as checking your personal computer for other malware presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Search-fine 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 Search-fine pop-ups?

Search-fine popups are a consequence of adware presence. Adware is a type of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a major amount of profit for adware suppliers. These advertisements might have sometimes shocking content, or have a link to malevolent content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no reason to check the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is cash.

Search-fine push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a very good, low-cost and also really effective marketing tool¹. It permits the vendor to link the buyers’ interest to their website, as well as the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. When the customer will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he likes to purchase is provided at the online shop he/she visited earlier with a 15% price cut, one will certainly use this chance and purchase it. Considering the incredibly low price for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising method is a much-loved thing among the marketing teams of big online sellers.

However, such a profitable plan could not be missed by virus creators. Potential to demonstrate the popup ads forcibly to the targets of malware attack is an ideal basis for malicious tricks with the popup promotions. And Search-fine.com promotions is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short info for the Search-fine site

How have I got the Search-fine virus?

There are a plenty of methods of getting contaminated by the adware that create the Search-fine popups tornado. A lion’s part of this computer virus incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software can likewise be downloaded from the official web page, and the adware is presented as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of individuals often use the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various tools that are free of cost, or even hacked programs. Every one of these types of programs are risky, due to the fact that it is quite easy to build in a Search-fine 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.

Search-fine popup malware can additionally be concealed in the ad somewhere on the odd web page. Such websites are typically loaded with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their owners often accept any kind of promos to be placed on their page. Therefore, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement contractor realizes what will occur when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can also get something much more threatening, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

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

Potentially unwanted programs, like Search-fine popup virus may provoke a wide range of different troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-ups can display you the banners, where you are offered to download another dubious program, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often spread with the use of the last slogun. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is very hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and fake antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also exploited as a spreading way by various trojan viruses, for example – 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 clicking these advertisements, they can be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Search-fine pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Search-fine adware removal includes 2 sections. First, we need to exterminate the malware, and after that correct the consequences of its activity. The removal procedure is pretty easy, because it can be performed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware tool that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, as a result of its huge resources utilization, along with some defects that can be critical for some groups of users, Defender is oftentimes turned off by the users, so its usage is likely impossible. What’s more, different trojan viruses can shut off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven anti-malware device that will surely erase the malware from your system and create an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection function. But let’s deal with Search-fine adware initially.

Removing Search-fine 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 Search-fine 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 definitely connect the proper DNS while connecting to the website you need. Make a text file named “hosts” on your 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 a lot harder to fix, particularly without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware versions that are utilized to show you the Search-fine pop-up advertisements are modifying the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your system was infected 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 responding for ~ 30 secs, and then 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.

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 Search-fine Pop-ups?

Name: Search-fine

Description: Search-fine - 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 Search-fine.com push notifications?” or “why do Search-fine.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Search-fine 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 ads on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware overview and also the reasons why I advise it for malware elimination.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.