How to remove Viralgauge pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Viralgauge pop-up notifications may show up out of the blue, covering the material of the website you checked or opening your browser when you do not need it to be opened.

Clicking on the Viralgauge promotion can cause the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guide of Viralgauge popups removal in several ways, and also inspecting your personal computer for other viruses presence.

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What are Viralgauge pop-ups?

Viralgauge popups are an effect of adware presence. Adware is a kind of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which generates a massive amount of income for adware suppliers. These advertisements may contain explicit content, or have a web link to malicious content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the material they are going to show – their single target is money.

Viralgauge push notification

Viralgauge push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is an excellent, low-priced and also extremely efficient marketing tool1. It enables the vendor to link the buyers’ attention to their website, and the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the person will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he likes to buy is provided at the online shop he/she checked out previously with a 15% price cut, one will definitely use this opportunity and get it. Considering the incredibly small cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing method is a favorite thing among the advertising departments of huge internet stores.

Nevertheless, such a rewarding scheme could not be missed by malware developers. Potential to show the popup ads by force to the victims of malware invasion is a great basis for malicious manipulations with the popup ads. And Viralgauge.com ads is among hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a info for the Viralgauge
SiteViralgauge.com
HostingAS54600 PEG TECH INC
United States, San Jose
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address163.197.228.46
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorNews, Desktopsecurityradar, Xnuqrv
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Viralgauge virus?

There are a number of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that trigger the Viralgauge 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 website, and the adware is offered as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of individuals regularly utilize the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different tools that are free, and even hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of applications are unsafe, since it is extremely easy to integrate a Viralgauge malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Viralgauge popup malware may also be concealed in the ad somewhere on the odd site. Such web pages are in most cases loaded with colorful and blinking ads, and their owners usually permit any kind of promos to be published on their web page. Therefore, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the ad contractor knows what will occur when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may likewise receive something far more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious promotions.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable programs, like Viralgauge popup virus may cause a lot of different troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-up notifications can show you the promotions, where you are offered to download one more strange application, or “a perfect security tool”. Scareware is often spread with the use of the last motto. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and fake antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also exploited as a distribution way by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these advertisements, they may be clicked by someone who also uses your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data and money loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

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

The manual of Viralgauge adware elimination includes 2 sections. Initially, we need to get rid of the malware, and then correct the consequences of its activity. The removal task is pretty simple, since it may be performed even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-virus software that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, due to its significant resources utilization, as well as some failures that may be crucial for some types of individuals, Defender is frequently turned off by the users, so its use is probably impossible. Furthermore, different trojan viruses are able to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I would certainly recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware device that will surely exterminate the viruses from your system and create an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s manage Viralgauge adware first.

Removing Viralgauge 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 Viralgauge 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 accurate DNS while connecting to the website you need. Make a text file named “hosts” on your desktop, then open it and fill it with the following lines3:

# 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.

However, there is one problem that makes the things a lot harder to fix, specifically without the anti-malware software. The majority of adware variants that are used to show you the Viralgauge pop-up promotions are altering the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your PC was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and then it will be back to the normal, up until 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 Viralgauge Pop-ups?

Name: Viralgauge

Description: Viralgauge - 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 Viralgauge.com push notifications?” or “why do Viralgauge.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Viralgauge 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 review and the reasons why I suggest 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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