Remove Stormstone.top Virus — How to Fix Guide

Stormstone.top pop-up notices can appear out of the blue, covering the content of the site you checked or opening your browser when you don’t want it to be opened.

Clicking the Stormstone.top ad may cause the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the manual of Stormstone.top popups removal in several methods, as well as inspecting your computer for extra malware existence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Stormstone.top 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.

DOWNLOAD NOW

Gridinsoft Anti-Malware 6-day trial available.
EULA | Privacy Policy | 10% Off Coupon

Subscribe to our Telegram channel to be the first to know about news and our exclusive materials on information security.

What are Stormstone.top pop-ups?

Stormstone.top popups are an effect 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 major volume of profit for adware distributors. These promotions may have explicit composition, or have a link to malicious content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

Stormstone.top push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a very good, affordable and also extremely efficient marketing tool¹. It makes it possible for the seller to link the customers’ interest to their site, as well as the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. 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% discount, one will certainly use this possibility and purchase it. Taking into consideration the exceptionally low cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing tool is a much-loved thing among the marketing departments of huge internet sellers.

Nonetheless, such a successful scheme could not be missed by virus creators. Option to demonstrate the popup ads forcibly to the targets of malware attack is an ideal basis for evil-minded manipulations with the popup ads. And Stormstone.top advertisements is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short info for the Stormstone.top

How have I got the Stormstone.top virus?

There are a number of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that result in the Stormstone.top popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware instances is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software may also be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is supplied as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of users oftentimes make use of the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different utilities that are free, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of applications are dangerous, because it is quite easy to integrate a Stormstone.top malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Stormstone.top popup malware can likewise be concealed in the ad somewhere on the strange web page. Such websites are usually full of intense and blinking ads, and their proprietors often permit any type of promos to be published on their page. Hence, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor knows what will happen when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may likewise get something a lot more damaging, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial 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 Stormstone.top pop-up virus may initiate a lot of troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-ups may present you the banners, where you are offered to get another strange program, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is usually spread under the last slogun. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related banners are also used as a distribution way by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these banners, they can be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Stormstone.top pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Stormstone.top adware clearing contains 2 sections. Initially, we need to remove the malware, and afterwards repair the effects of its action. The removal procedure is really simple, since it can be performed even with using Microsoft Defender – security software that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, as a result of its substantial resources utilization, along with some failures that can be crucial for some types of individuals, Defender is frequently turned off by the users, so its utilization is likely impossible. Furthermore, different trojan viruses have the ability 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 use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven security device that will definitely wipe out the malware from your computer and also make an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s manage Stormstone.top adware first.

Removing Stormstone.top 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 Stormstone.top 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 proper DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following lines³:

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 much more difficult to fix, specifically without the anti-malware software. A lot of adware variants that are used to show you the Stormstone.top pop-up advertisements are changing the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your computer was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and then it will be back to the normal, up until you try 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.

1. More about pop-up advertisements on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and the reasons why I suggest it for malware removal.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.