Remove Winsites.net Pop-up Ads — How to Fix Gude

Winsites.net pop-up notifications can show up out of the blue, covering the subject of the site you checked or opening your browser when you do not wish it to be opened.

Clicking on the Winsites.net promotion may trigger the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the tutorial of Winsites.net popups clearing in multiple ways, as well as checking your system for extra malware presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Winsites.net 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 Winsites.net pop-ups?

Winsites.net popups are a consequence of adware presence. Adware is a kind of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which produces a major volume of earnings for adware distributors. These promotions might consist of explicit material, or have a link to malevolent content/website, because adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

Winsites.net push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a very good, cheap and also extremely effective marketing tool¹. It enables the vendor to attach the buyers’ interest to their site, as well as the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the consumer will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to purchase is offered at the online store he/she saw earlier with a 15% price cut, one will definitely use this opportunity and buy it. Taking into consideration the extremely small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing method is a favourite thing amidst the marketing teams of huge online retailers.

Nevertheless, such a rewarding strategy could not be missed by malware creators. Potential to show the popup advertisements by force to the victims of malware attack is an ideal basis for malicious tricks with the popup ads. And Winsites.net promotions is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short details for the Winsites.net site

How have I got the Winsites.net virus?

There are a lot of methods of becoming infected by the adware that result in the Winsites.net popups tornado. A lion’s part of this computer virus instances is after the free software or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware may also be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is provided as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A lot of people often utilize the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, different utilities that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. Every one of these types of applications are dangerous, since it is extremely simple to build in a Winsites.net 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.

Winsites.net popup malware may additionally be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the unusual site. Such sites are generally filled with colorful and blinking ads, and their proprietors usually accept any promotions to be posted on their page. Hence, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad provider realizes what will happen when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can additionally receive something much more hazardous, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious ads.

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

Potentially undesirable applications, like Winsites.net pop-up virus can provoke a wide range of different troubles on your computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-ups may show you the promotions, where you are offered to download one more unknown application, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the use of the last slogun. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is quite hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also exploited as a spreading method by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these banners, they may be clicked by whoever who also uses your 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 loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Winsites.net pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Winsites.net adware removal includes 2 sections. Initially, we need to get rid of the malware, and afterwards correct the results of its activity. The removal task is very simple, since it may be done even with making use of Microsoft Defender – security tool that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, because of its large resources utilization, as well as some problems that can be critical for some categories of users, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its usage is likely impossible. What’s more, various trojan viruses can switch off the embedded antivirus. It is better to use the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven anti-malware device that will definitely erase the malware from your computer and make an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s deal with Winsites.net adware first.

Removing Winsites.net 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 Winsites.net 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 ensure that your browser will definitely be connected the proper DNS while connecting to the website you want. Create a text file named “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following content³:

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 trouble that makes things a lot more difficult to repair, specifically without the anti-malware program. Most of adware variations that are used to show you the Winsites.net pop-up advertisements are modifying the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your computer was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and afterwards it will be back to the typical, till you attempt 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.

How to Remove Winsites.net Pop-ups?

Name: Winsites.net

Description: Winsites.net - 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 Winsites.net push notifications?” or “why do Winsites.net pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Winsites.net 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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1. More about pop-up advertisements on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware overview and also the reasons why I suggest it for malware elimination.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.