Remove Spectrumtop Pop-up Ads — How to Fix Gude

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Spectrumtop pop-up alerts may appear unexpectedly, covering the subject of the page you explored or opening your browser when you don’t wish it to be opened.

Clicking the Spectrumtop promotion may trigger the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guideline of Spectrumtop popups removal in multiple manners, as well as checking your PC for additional malware existence.

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What are Spectrumtop pop-ups?

Spectrumtop popups are an outcome of adware presence. Adware is a type of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which creates a major volume of revenue for adware distributors. These ads may consist of explicit material, or have a link to malevolent content/website, because adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the material they are going to reveal – their solitary target is money.

Spectrumtop push notification

Spectrumtop push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is an excellent, cheap and really effective marketing instrument1. It makes it possible for the seller to link the customers’ interest to their website, and the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the person will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he likes to purchase is offered at the online store he/she checked out earlier with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this possibility and buy it. Considering the exceptionally small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing instrument is a much-loved thing among the advertising teams of huge online sellers.

However, such a rewarding plan could not be missed by malware developers. Ability to show the popup advertisements by force to the targets of malware attack is a great basis for malevolent manipulations with the popup advertisements. And Spectrumtop2.xyz advertisements is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short details for the Spectrumtop site
SiteSpectrumtop2.xyz
HostingAS15317 Serverel Inc.
United States, Contra Costa Centre
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address173.214.240.15
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorRockstarsale, Bigclik, Gate8
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Spectrumtop virus?

There are a lot of methods of getting contaminated by the adware that trigger the Spectrumtop popups storm. A lion’s part of this virus cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware can also be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is presented as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of users often make use of the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different tools that are free, and even hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of software are risky, due to the fact that it is very easy to build in a Spectrumtop malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Spectrumtop popup virus may likewise be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the odd site. Such websites are typically loaded with intense and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors typically accept any promos to be posted on their page. Therefore, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor realizes what will happen when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may also receive something far more threatening, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable programs, like Spectrumtop popup virus may provoke a wide range of different troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-ups may display you the ads, where you are offered to get one more unknown program, or “a perfect security tool”. Scareware is usually spread under the last motto. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and fake antiviruses, popup-related banners are also used as a distribution method by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these advertisements, they may be clicked by whoever who also uses your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without information loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

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

The tutorial of Spectrumtop adware clearing includes 2 parts. First, we need to eliminate the malware, and afterwards fix the effects of its action. The removal process is very easy, since it may be performed even with using Microsoft Defender – security program that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, because of its huge resources utilization, along with some failures that may be serious for some types of individuals, Defender is oftentimes disabled by the users, so its use is probably impossible. Furthermore, various trojan viruses can switch off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d recommend you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware tool that will surely erase the viruses from your personal computer and also create an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s take care of Spectrumtop adware initially.

Removing Spectrumtop 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 Spectrumtop 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 web browsers are reset, you need to make sure that your browser will connect the accurate DNS while connecting to the site you need. Create a text file named “hosts” on your pc’s 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.

Nonetheless, there is one trouble that makes the things much more difficult to fix, particularly without the anti-malware software. A lot of adware versions that are utilized to show you the Spectrumtop pop-up advertisements are changing the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your PC was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the typical, till 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.

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 Spectrumtop Pop-ups?

Name: Spectrumtop

Description: Spectrumtop - 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 Spectrumtop2.xyz push notifications?” or “why do Spectrumtop2.xyz pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Spectrumtop 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 advertisements on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware overview and also 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.

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