Remove Serch04 Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Serch04 pop-up notifications may appear out of the blue, covering the post of the page you checked or opening your browser when you don’t wish it to be opened.

Clicking the Serch04 ad can result in the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the manual of Serch04 popups removal in a couple of methods, and also inspecting your personal computer for extra viruses existence.

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What are Serch04 pop-ups?

Serch04 popups are an outcome of adware activity. Adware is a type of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which produces a significant volume of income for adware suppliers. These promotions may include sometimes shocking content, or have a web link to malicious content/website, since adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is money.

Serch04 push notification

Serch04 push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a good, low-cost and very successful marketing tool1. It permits the seller to attach the buyers’ attention to their website, and the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the customer will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he likes to purchase is available at the online store he/she saw earlier with a 15% price cut, one will certainly use this possibility and get it. Taking into consideration the incredibly low cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing method is a favourite thing amongst the advertising departments of huge internet retail stores.

Nevertheless, such a rewarding strategy could not be missed by malware developers. Potential to demonstrate the popup advertisements by force to the targets of malware attack is an excellent basis for malevolent manipulations with the popup promotions. And Serch04.biz advertisements is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short info for the Serch04
Site Serch04.biz
Hosting AS14061 DigitalOcean, LLC
Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 128.199.45.147
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Serch03, Serch01, Serch02
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Serch04 virus?

There are a lot of ways of getting infected by the adware that create the Serch04 popups tornado. A lion’s part of this computer virus instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware may likewise be downloaded from the official web page, and the adware is supplied as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of individuals regularly work with the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various tools that are free of cost, or even hacked programs. Every one of these types of applications are dangerous, due to the fact that it is quite easy to build in a Serch04 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.

Serch04 popup virus may additionally be concealed in the advertisement somewhere on the unusual site. Such websites are generally filled with intense and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors typically accept any type of promos to be posted on their page. Thus, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement contractor realizes what will occur when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can also receive something much more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious ads.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Serch04 pop-up virus can provoke a wide range of troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-ups may present you the banners, where you are offered to download another dubious program, or “a perfect anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often spread with the last motto. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, may 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 potentially unwanted programs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also exploited as a distribution way by different 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 interacting with these banners, they may be clicked by someone who also uses your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation 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 anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Serch04 pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Serch04 adware elimination consists of 2 parts. Initially, we need to remove the malware, and after that fix the consequences of its activity. The elimination task is pretty easy, since it can be done even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus program that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, as a result of its significant resources usage, along with some errors that may be serious for some categories of individuals, Defender is oftentimes disabled by the users, so its usage is most likely impossible. Moreover, various trojan viruses can switch off the embedded antivirus. It is better to use the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I’d suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus tool that will surely remove the viruses from your computer and create an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection function. But let’s take care of Serch04 adware first.

Removing Serch04 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 Serch04 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 definitely connect the right DNS while connecting to the website you want. Make a text file named “hosts” on your desktop, then open it and fill it with the following text3:

# 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 more difficult to repair, particularly without the anti-malware software. Most of adware versions that are utilized to show you the Serch04 pop-up advertisements are adjusting the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your PC was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse soon. In some cases, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and after that it will be back to the typical, 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 Serch04 Pop-ups?

Name: Serch04

Description: Serch04 - 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 Serch04.biz push notifications?” or “why do Serch04.biz pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Serch04 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 ads on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware overview and 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.

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