Remove Smrtdirect Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Smrtdirect pop-up notifications can appear unexpectedly, covering the material of the page you went to or opening your web browser when you don’t desire it to be opened.

Clicking on the Smrtdirect advertisement can cause the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the manual of Smrtdirect popups removal in various ways, and also examining your computer for other viruses presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Smrtdirect 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 Smrtdirect pop-ups?

Smrtdirect popups are a consequence of adware presence. Adware is a type of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which creates a substantial volume of profit for adware suppliers. These ads may contain sometimes shocking information, or have a web link to malicious content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their single target is cash.

Smrtdirect push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is an excellent, low-priced and also really efficient marketing tool¹. It permits the seller to link the customers’ interest to their site, and the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the person will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to purchase is available at the online store he/she visited earlier with a 15% discount, one will undoubtedly use this opportunity and buy it. Taking into consideration the extremely low cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing tool is a favourite thing amidst the advertising departments of large internet retail stores.

Nevertheless, such a rewarding plan could not be missed by virus creators. Ability to demonstrate the popup ads by force to the people of malware invasion is a great basis for malicious adjustments with the popup advertisements. And Smrtdirect.com advertisements is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a summary for the Smrtdirect site

How have I got the Smrtdirect virus?

There are a lot of ways of getting infected by the adware that lead to the Smrtdirect popups tornado. A lion’s part of this computer virus incidents is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware can additionally be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is supplied as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of users oftentimes use the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, a wide range of tools that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. Every one of these types of programs are unsafe, because it is extremely simple to build in a Smrtdirect 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.

Smrtdirect popup malware can additionally be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the strange web page. Such sites are usually full of bright and blinking ads, and their proprietors usually approve any kind of promotions to be posted on their page. Therefore, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement contractor knows what will happen when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may likewise get something a lot more threatening, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Smrtdirect popup virus can initiate a variety of different problems on your personal computer. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-up notifications may show you the banners, where you are offered to download one more unknown application, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the use of the last slogun. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related ads are also used as a spreading method by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these banners, they may be clicked by whoever 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 remove the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

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

The tutorial of Smrtdirect adware clearing consists of 2 parts. Initially, we need to eliminate the malware, and afterwards repair the results of its activity. The elimination task is quite easy, because it may be executed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – security program that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, due to its substantial resources utilization, along with some failures that may be pivotal for some kinds of individuals, Defender is oftentimes turned off by the users, so its utilization is likely impossible. Moreover, various trojan viruses are able to disable the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven antivirus tool that will definitely eliminate the malware from your system and make an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s deal with Smrtdirect adware initially.

Removing Smrtdirect 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 Smrtdirect 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 ensure that your web browser will definitely be connected the appropriate DNS while connecting to the site you want. 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 problem that makes the things a lot harder to fix, particularly without the anti-malware program. Most of adware versions that are utilized to show you the Smrtdirect pop-up ads are altering the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your machine was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, but significant lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the normal, until you try 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 Smrtdirect Pop-ups?

Name: Smrtdirect

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