Remove Smooth-captcha.com Pop-up Ads — How to Fix Gude

Smooth-captcha.com pop-up notices may show up unexpectedly, covering the material of the page you checked or opening your browser when you do not wish it to be opened.

Clicking the Smooth-captcha.com ad may result in the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the tutorial of Smooth-captcha.com popups removal in multiple methods, as well as examining your personal computer for additional viruses presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Smooth-captcha.com 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 Smooth-captcha.com pop-ups?

Smooth-captcha.com popups are an effect of adware presence. Adware is a sort of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which generates a major amount of earnings for adware distributors. These promotions may have sometimes shocking composition, or have a web link to malevolent content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the material they are going to reveal – their solitary target is money.

Smooth-captcha.com push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a good, affordable and also really efficient marketing instrument¹. It enables the vendor to attach the buyers’ attention to their website, and the customers 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 offered at the online shop he/she checked out previously with a 15% discount, one will definitely use this opportunity and purchase it. Taking into consideration the very low cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing tool is a much-loved thing amidst the advertising departments of huge internet stores.

However, such a rewarding system could not be missed by virus developers. Option to demonstrate the popup advertisements by force to the victims of malware invasion is an excellent basis for malevolent adjustments with the popup ads. And Smooth-captcha.com promotions is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short summary for the Smooth-captcha.com site

How have I got the Smooth-captcha.com virus?

There are a number of ways of becoming infected by the adware that trigger the Smooth-captcha.com popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware can additionally be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is provided as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of people often use the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of tools that are free, and even hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of programs are risky, since it is very easy to integrate a Smooth-captcha.com 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.

Smooth-captcha.com popup virus may additionally be concealed in the advertisement somewhere on the odd web page. Such web pages are usually packed with colorful and blinking ads, and their proprietors usually approve any promotions to be published on their page. Therefore, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad provider realizes what will occur when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can likewise get something a lot more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious promotions.

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

Potentially unwanted applications, like Smooth-captcha.com pop-up virus may provoke a wide range of troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-ups may display you the promotions, where you are offered to get another strange program, or “a perfect anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the use of the last motto. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is quite hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also chosen as a distribution method by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these ads, they may 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 eliminate the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Smooth-captcha.com pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Smooth-captcha.com adware elimination includes 2 sections. Initially, we need to eliminate the malware, and then take care of the consequences of its action. The removal task is pretty easy, because it may be executed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus software that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, as a result of its significant resources consumption, along with some failures that may be serious for some types of users, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its utilization is most likely impossible. Moreover, different trojan viruses have the ability to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I would certainly advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven security device that will undoubtedly wipe out the viruses from your system and create an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s take care of Smooth-captcha.com adware initially.

Removing Smooth-captcha.com 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 Smooth-captcha.com 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 browsers are reset, you need to ensure that your web browser will definitely connect the proper DNS while connecting to the website you need. Create a text file named “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following content³:

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 trouble that makes things a lot harder to repair, particularly without the anti-malware software. Most of adware variants that are used to show you the Smooth-captcha.com pop-up promotions are changing the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your system was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and afterwards it will be back to the normal, up until you attempt 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 Smooth-captcha.com Pop-ups?

Name: Smooth-captcha.com

Description: Smooth-captcha.com - 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 Smooth-captcha.com push notifications?” or “why do Smooth-captcha.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Smooth-captcha.com 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 review and the reasons why I recommend it for malware elimination.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.