Remove Totalcoolblog Virus — How to Fix Guide

Totalcoolblog pop-up notifications may appear unexpectedly, covering the material of the website you explored or opening your web browser when you do not want it to be opened.

Clicking the Totalcoolblog promotion may lead to the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guideline of Totalcoolblog popups clearing in a couple of methods, and also checking your PC for extra viruses existence.

What are Totalcoolblog pop-ups?

Totalcoolblog popups are a consequence of adware activity. Adware is a type of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which generates a large amount of revenue for adware suppliers. These ads may contain explicit content, or have a web link to harmful content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the web content they are going to show – their single target is money.

Totalcoolblog push notification

Totalcoolblog push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a very good, low-priced and also extremely successful advertising instrument1. It makes it possible for the vendor to attach the buyers’ attention to their site, and the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to purchase. When the consumer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he likes to buy is offered at the online store he/she visited previously with a 15% discount, one will undoubtedly use this chance and purchase it. Taking into consideration the exceptionally low price for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising instrument is a favorite thing among the advertising teams of large internet sellers.

Nevertheless, such a successful scheme could not be missed by malware developers. Option to show the popup ads forcibly to the victims of malware invasion is an excellent basis for malicious tricks with the popup ads. And Totalcoolblog.com ads is among hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short info for the Totalcoolblog site
Site Totalcoolblog.com
Hosting AS9002 RETN Limited
Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 139.45.197.146
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Aframeofmuki, Taboo, Airfind
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Totalcoolblog virus?

There are a lot of methods of becoming contaminated by the adware that result in the Totalcoolblog popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware may also be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is delivered as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of individuals often utilize the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various apps that are free, and even hacked programs. Every one of these types of applications are risky, since it is extremely simple to build in a Totalcoolblog 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.

People dislike popups

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

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

The guide of Totalcoolblog adware removal contains 2 sections. Initially, we need to eliminate the malware, and after that deal with the results of its action. The removal procedure is really simple, since it may be executed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – security software that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, due to its large resources consumption, as well as some problems that may be serious for some groups of individuals, Defender is oftentimes turned off by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. What’s more, a wide range of trojan viruses are able to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

    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 Totalcoolblog malware the default option is “Delete”. Press “Apply” to finish the malware removal.
  • GridinSoft Anti-Malware - After Cleaning

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 connect the accurate 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.

Nevertheless, there is one issue that makes things a lot harder to fix, specifically without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware variants that are used to show you the Totalcoolblog pop-up ads are adjusting the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your machine was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash soon. In some cases, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and after that it will be back to the normal, up until you try to open settings once more.

References

  1. More about pop-up ads on Wikipedia.
  2. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.

About the author

Wilbur Woodham

Technical writer covering malware detections, unwanted programs, and browser-based threats. Wilbur turns research notes into step-by-step guides that Windows users can follow safely.

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