Remove Startusef1le.com Virus — How to Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Startusef1le.com pop-up notices may show up unexpectedly, covering the material of the website you explored or opening your browser when you don’t desire it to be opened.

Clicking on the Startusef1le.com advertisement can cause the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guideline of Startusef1le.com popups clearing in various methods, and also examining your computer for extra malware existence.

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What are Startusef1le.com pop-ups?

Startusef1le.com popups are an effect of adware action. Adware is a kind of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which creates a major volume of earnings for adware suppliers. These ads might have explicit information, or have a web link to malevolent content/website, because adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the content they are going to show – their solitary target is cash.

Startusef1le.com push notification

Startusef1le.com push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is an excellent, low-priced and really efficient marketing solution1. It allows the vendor to attach the customers’ interest to their site, as well as the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the person will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he likes to purchase is provided at the online shop he/she visited previously with a 15% discount, one will undoubtedly use this chance and buy it. Considering the extremely small cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising instrument is a favourite thing among the advertising departments of huge internet retailers.

However, such a successful scheme could not be missed by malware creators. Potential to demonstrate the popup ads by force to the victims of malware invasion is a perfect basis for malicious manipulations with the popup advertisements. And Startusef1le.com ads is among hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short info for the Startusef1le.com
SiteStartusef1le.com
HostingAS35415 Webzilla B.V.
Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address188.72.236.136
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorNews, Breedyhodger, Naufauzo
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Startusef1le.com virus?

There are a plenty of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that create the Startusef1le.com popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware incidents is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware may also be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is delivered as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of users oftentimes work with the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, various tools that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of applications are unsafe, because it is very simple to include a Startusef1le.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.

Startusef1le.com popup malware can additionally be hidden in the advertisement somewhere on the unusual web page. Such websites are generally filled with bright and blinking advertisements, and their owners generally accept any type of promos to be placed on their page. Thus, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad provider realizes what will occur when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you can likewise receive something far more threatening, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners distribution 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 programs, like Startusef1le.com popup virus may provoke a lot of troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-ups can present you the ads, where you are offered to download one more dubious program, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the last slogun. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also chosen as a distribution way by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these banners, they can be clicked by someone who also makes use of your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data and money loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Startusef1le.com pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Startusef1le.com adware elimination consists of 2 sections. First, we need to deal with the malware, and after that fix the results of its action. The elimination procedure is very easy, because it can be done even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus software that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, because of its large resources consumption, along with some bugs that may be serious for some categories of individuals, Defender is frequently turned off by the users, so its usage is likely impossible. Moreover, different trojan viruses can switch off the embedded antivirus. It is better to make use of the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I would certainly recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security device that will definitely remove the malware from your computer and create an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s deal with Startusef1le.com adware initially.

Removing Startusef1le.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.
  • 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 Startusef1le.com 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 ensure that your browser will definitely be connected the right DNS while connecting to the website you need. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following content3:

# 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 problem that makes things a lot more difficult to fix, especially without the anti-malware program. A lot of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Startusef1le.com pop-up promotions are changing the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your machine was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the normal, till 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 Startusef1le.com Pop-ups?

Name: Startusef1le.com

Description: Startusef1le.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 Startusef1le.com push notifications?” or “why do Startusef1le.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Startusef1le.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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References

  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.

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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