Remove Swatonquoust Virus — How to Fix Guide

Swatonquoust pop-up alerts may show up unexpectedly, covering the subject of the site you visited or opening your web browser when you do not desire it to be opened.

Clicking the Swatonquoust promotion can trigger the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the tutorial of Swatonquoust popups removal in a couple of methods, and also inspecting your system for additional viruses presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Swatonquoust 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 Swatonquoust pop-ups?

Swatonquoust popups are a result of adware action. Adware is a kind of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which creates a massive volume of income for adware suppliers. These advertisements might consist of explicit content, or have a link to malicious content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the web content they are going to show – their solitary target is cash.

Swatonquoust push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a very good, cheap and also extremely successful advertising tool¹. It permits the vendor to attach the customers’ interest to their website, and the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the person will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to buy is available at the online shop he/she checked out earlier with a 15% discount, one will definitely use this opportunity and purchase it. Considering the exceptionally low cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising method is a favourite thing amongst the advertising departments of huge online sellers.

Nevertheless, such a successful strategy could not be missed by virus developers. Ability to demonstrate the popup ads forcibly to the targets of malware attack is an excellent basis for malicious adjustments with the popup advertisements. And Swatonquoust.com promotions is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short details for the Swatonquoust

How have I got the Swatonquoust virus?

There are a lot of ways of becoming infected by the adware that lead to the Swatonquoust popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus instances is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware can additionally be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is delivered as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of people frequently make use of the unreliable programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, different tools that are free, or even hacked programs. All of these types of programs are dangerous, because it is very simple to integrate a Swatonquoust malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Swatonquoust popup virus may additionally be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the unusual web page. Such websites are usually loaded with intense and blinking ads, and their owners generally accept any promotions to be placed on their page. For this reason, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement contractor realizes what will occur when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may additionally receive something much more unsafe, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

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

Potentially unwanted applications, like Swatonquoust popup virus can initiate a lot of troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-ups can display you the banners, where you are offered to download another dubious program, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the use of the last motto. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also chosen as a distribution way by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these advertisements, they can be clicked by someone 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 information loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

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

The manual of Swatonquoust adware clearing includes 2 sections. First, we need to get rid of the malware, and after that repair the results of its activity. The removal task is really simple, because it may be performed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – security tool that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, as a result of its huge resources consumption, as well as some errors that can be critical for some types of individuals, Defender is oftentimes turned off by the users, so its use is most likely impossible. Additionally, a wide range of 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 advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven antivirus device that will definitely erase the malware from your personal computer and also create an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection function. But let’s deal with Swatonquoust adware first.

Removing Swatonquoust 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 Swatonquoust 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 make sure that your browser will definitely connect the correct DNS while connecting to the site you want. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your desktop, then 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.

However, there is one trouble that makes the things much more difficult to repair, specifically without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware versions that are used to show you the Swatonquoust pop-up ads are modifying the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your computer was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the normal, until you attempt to open settings once more.

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 ads on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and also the reasons why I suggest it for malware removal.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.