Clicking the Zstrive advertisement may result in the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guideline of Zstrive popups clearing in several methods, and also inspecting your computer for extra malware presence.

What are Zstrive pop-ups?

Zstrive popups are a result of adware presence. Adware is a kind of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which produces a substantial amount of earnings for adware representatives. These ads may contain sometimes shocking information, or have a link to malicious content/website, since adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the content they are going to show – their solitary target is money.

Zstrive push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is an excellent, low-priced and also extremely efficient advertising instrument¹. It allows the seller to attach the buyers’ attention 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 alert that the TV set he likes to buy is offered at the online store he/she saw previously with a 15% discount, one will undoubtedly use this possibility and get it. Considering the exceptionally low price for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing tool is a much-loved thing among the advertising departments of large internet retailers.

However, such a rewarding scheme could not be missed by malware creators. Ability to demonstrate the popup ads forcibly to the victims of malware attack is a great basis for malevolent tricks with the popup promotions. And Zstrive.com ads is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Site	Zstrive.com
Hosting	AS13335 Cloudflare, Inc. United States, San Francisco
Infection Type	Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address	188.114.96.3
Symptoms	Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior	Muset, Pushyoumail, Cousonelly
Fix Tool	GridinSoft Anti-MalwareTo remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Zstrive virus?

There are a plenty of ways of becoming contaminated by the adware that lead to the Zstrive popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware can additionally be downloaded from the official website, and the adware is presented as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of individuals oftentimes work with the uncertain programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of utilities that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of applications are unsafe, because it is quite easy to include a Zstrive malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Zstrive popup malware may likewise be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the strange web page. Such websites are in most cases packed with bright and blinking advertisements, and their owners often accept any kind of promos to be placed on their web page. Therefore, clicking 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 receive something much more risky, 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 applications, like Zstrive pop-up virus may provoke a wide range of different troubles on your computer. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-up notifications can display you the promotions, where you are offered to download one more unknown program, or “a perfect anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually distributed with the last slogun. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related ads are also exploited as a distribution way by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these advertisements, they can be clicked by someone who also makes use of 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 information loss. It is recommended to remove the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

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

The tutorial of Zstrive adware clearing consists of 2 parts. Initially, we need to deal with the malware, and afterwards correct the effects of its action. The elimination process is really easy, since it can be done even with using Microsoft Defender – security program that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, because of its large resources consumption, as well as some errors that may be pivotal for some groups of users, Defender is oftentimes disabled by the users, so its usage is likely impossible. In addition, a variety of trojan viruses have the ability to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d advise you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven antivirus tool that will undoubtedly erase the viruses from your system and make an impenetrable shield with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s handle Zstrive adware initially.

Download GridinSoft Anti-Malware

Removing Zstrive 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 Zstrive 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

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 :

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 :

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 :

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 web browser will definitely connect the accurate DNS while connecting to the website you need. Create a text file named “hosts” on your computer’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.

However, there is one issue that makes the things a lot more difficult to repair, particularly without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Zstrive pop-up ads are modifying the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your machine was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and after that it will be back to the typical, up until you try 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.

References

1. More about pop-up advertisements on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and the reasons why I advise it for malware elimination.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.