Remove Zpwnan Virus — How to Fix Guide

Zpwnan pop-up alerts may show up out of the blue, covering the subject of the website you visited or opening your browser when you do not desire it to be opened.

Clicking on the Zpwnan promotion can trigger the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guide of Zpwnan popups clearing in several manners, and also examining your PC for extra malware presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Zpwnan 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 Zpwnan pop-ups?

Zpwnan popups are a result of adware activity. Adware is a kind of malware that demonstrates to you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which produces a large volume of profit for adware distributors. These promotions might have explicit content, or have a link to malevolent content/website, since adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their single target is cash.

Zpwnan push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is an excellent, low-cost and very successful marketing method¹. It makes it possible for the vendor to link the buyers’ interest to their site, and the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the consumer will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to purchase is offered at the online shop he/she checked out earlier with a 15% discount, one will undoubtedly use this possibility and purchase it. Taking into consideration the incredibly small cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing instrument is a favourite thing among the marketing departments of huge online stores.

Nevertheless, such a profitable system could not be missed by virus developers. Ability to demonstrate the popup ads by force to the targets of malware attack is an ideal basis for malicious tricks with the popup advertisements. And Zpwnan.com ads is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a details for the Zpwnan site

How have I got the Zpwnan virus?

There are a number of ways of getting infected by the adware that result in the Zpwnan popups storm. A lion’s part of this virus cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software can also be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is offered as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of individuals often use the uncertain programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, different tools that are free, and even hacked programs. Every one of these types of software are risky, because it is extremely easy to integrate a Zpwnan 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.

Zpwnan popup virus can additionally be concealed in the advertisement somewhere on the strange website. Such websites are typically full of bright and blinking advertisements, and their owners usually permit any kind of promotions to be published on their page. For this reason, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor realizes what will happen when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may likewise get something much more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the large 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 programs, like Zpwnan popup virus may cause a variety of problems on your PC. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-ups can show you the promotions, where you are offered to get one more unknown program, or “a perfect security tool”. Scareware is usually distributed under the last slogun. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is very 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 used as a spreading method by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these promotions, they can be clicked by whoever who also uses your PC – 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 anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

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

The guide of Zpwnan adware removal contains 2 parts. First, we need to remove the malware, and afterwards repair the effects of its action. The removal process is very easy, because it may be done even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus program that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, because of its significant resources usage, along with some failures that may be crucial for some types of users, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its utilization is most likely impossible. What’s more, a variety of trojan viruses have the ability to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I would certainly suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven security tool that will surely wipe out the viruses from your system and also make an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s take care of Zpwnan adware first.

Removing Zpwnan 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 Zpwnan 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 web browsers are reset, you need to ensure that your web browser will definitely connect the correct DNS while connecting to the website you want. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your desktop, after that 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.

Nonetheless, there is one problem that makes things much harder to restore, especially without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware versions that are used to show you the Zpwnan pop-up promotions are altering the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your system was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and afterwards it will be back to the normal, till you try to open settings once 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.

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 Zpwnan Pop-ups?

Name: Zpwnan

Description: Zpwnan - 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 Zpwnan.com push notifications?” or “why do Zpwnan.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Zpwnan 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 ads on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and the reasons why I recommend it for malware removal.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.