Remove Sweetalt.ru Virus — How to Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Sweetalt.ru pop-up notifications may show up out of the blue, covering the content of the site you went to or opening your web browser when you don’t wish it to be opened.

Clicking the Sweetalt.ru advertisement can lead to the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guideline of Sweetalt.ru popups removal in multiple manners, as well as checking your PC for other viruses existence.

GridinSoft Anti-Malware Review
It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!
Removing Sweetalt.ru 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.
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 Sweetalt.ru pop-ups?

Sweetalt.ru popups are an outcome of adware action. Adware is a kind of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which produces a large amount of revenue for adware suppliers. These promotions may contain sometimes shocking information, or have a link to malicious content/website, because adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the material they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

Sweetalt.ru push notification

Sweetalt.ru push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is an excellent, low-priced and also very efficient marketing solution1. It allows the seller to link the buyers’ interest to their website, as well as the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they want to purchase. When the person will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to purchase is offered at the online store he/she visited previously with a 15% discount, one will undoubtedly use this opportunity and buy it. Taking into consideration the exceptionally low cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing method is a favorite thing amidst the advertising departments of large online sellers.

However, such a profitable system could not be missed by malware developers. Ability to demonstrate the popup advertisements forcibly to the people of malware attack is a great basis for malevolent tricks with the popup advertisements. And Sweetalt.ru advertisements is just one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short summary for the Sweetalt.ru
SiteSweetalt.ru
HostingAS14061 DigitalOcean, LLC
Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address178.62.225.201
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorBoostcash, Client, News
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Sweetalt.ru virus?

There are a lot of ways of becoming infected by the adware that cause the Sweetalt.ru popups tornado. A lion’s part of this computer virus incidents is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Free software may also be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is supplied as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of people oftentimes use the uncertain programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, various tools that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. All of these kinds of applications are dangerous, because it is extremely simple to build in a Sweetalt.ru 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.

Sweetalt.ru popup malware can also be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the odd web page. Such web pages are in most cases loaded with bright and blinking advertisements, and their owners often approve any type of promotions to be placed on their page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad provider realizes what will happen when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may additionally get something a lot more unsafe, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial 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 applications, like Sweetalt.ru pop-up virus can cause a variety of problems on your computer. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-up notifications can present you the promotions, where you are offered to get one more unknown application, or “a perfect anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often spread under the last slogun. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is very hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related banners are also used as a spreading way by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these promotions, they may be clicked by whoever who also uses your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data and money loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Sweetalt.ru pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Sweetalt.ru adware elimination contains 2 parts. First, we need to eliminate the malware, and afterwards take care of the consequences of its action. The removal procedure is really easy, due to the fact that it can be performed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus software that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, due to its huge resources consumption, along with some failures that may be critical for some kinds of users, Defender is oftentimes disabled by the users, so its use is likely impossible. Additionally, a variety of trojan viruses can disable 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 anti-malware device that will definitely remove the viruses from your personal computer and also create an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s take care of Sweetalt.ru adware first.

Removing Sweetalt.ru 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 Sweetalt.ru 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 browsers are reset, you need to make sure that your web browser will connect the accurate DNS while connecting to the website you need. Make a text file named “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, after that 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.

Nevertheless, there is one issue that makes the things a lot more difficult to restore, specifically without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware variants that are used to show you the Sweetalt.ru pop-up advertisements are modifying the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your PC was infected 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 then it will be back to the normal, till 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.

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 Sweetalt.ru Pop-ups?

Name: Sweetalt.ru

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

Sending
User Review
3.25 (4 votes)
Comments Rating 0 (0 reviews)

References

  1. More about pop-up advertisements on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and also the reasons why I recommend it for malware removal.
  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.

Leave a Reply

Sending