Jul 27, 2014

PriceChop Ads Removal Guide

PriceChop was installed on my computer and I cannot uninstall it. This program gives me crazy pop-up ads that keep pushing me to buy the product or download something I don’t need. I hate those ads that show up while you are scrolling down the page or the ones that pop up and take up the whole page. It is a sneaky way to advertise, it is intrusive. How do I get rid of “PriceChop” thing from the computer permanently? 

PriceChop Pop-up Ads Description:

PriceChop is an advertising-supported software that claims to enhance your web browsing experiences and save your time and money by providing discounts and other bonus and deals. However, you should not give any chance for this program to access your computer. If you unfortunately download this adware on your computer, the only thing you get is crazy advertisement and browser modification. As  Similar as browser hijacker threats, this program is capable of changing your computer settings like homepage, default search provider and registry editor, generating misleading alerts or even downloading other potentially unwanted programs. Once access, it will be hard for you to uninstall it from the computer because you may not be able to find PriceChop in Control Panel/Add or Remove Program. Even if the program is there, once you click “Uninstall” option, it may give you error message instead, blocking the uninstallation completely. PriceChop gives you only annoyance but not something helpful like it says. It can make a big problem on your machine if you don’t remove it quickly.

There are many ways for this malicious adware to access your computer and most probably you may get it when you download and install third-party software. PriceChop can be bundled with those programs you installed without your awareness. When you download it mistakenly, the first thing you will notice is that your browser goes crazy. It keeps displaying various advertisements that entices you to download endorse products. Whenever you browse online, misleading alerts and other pop-ups will bombard your computer screen, tempting you to click their ads. If you click on the ads, it just causes more viruses and other adware infection on your system. An adware is not safe for a computer because it may collect information about the user in order to display advertisements in the Web browsers like IE, Firefox and Chrome. To make sure your computer is safe enough, you have to uninstall PriceChop manually and get rid of all the related pop-up ads as quickly as you can.

Manual removal becomes a technical process that you should only undertake if you have experience with the Windows registry and know how to view and delete system and program files in Windows. If you’re not sure and are afraid to make any critical mistakes during the process, please live chat with YooCare Expert now.

How Can An Adware Get On Your PC?

Browser hijacker/Adware infection like PriceChop pop-up may enter your system as an add-on for your browser or bundled-up with some free software. Most of time, it can be downloaded from a website you visited, something you clicked on, or a pop-up that you did not request to view. You may not even know when and how you download this browser hijacker which compromises your internet security until you find your computer is fully messed up. A hijack virus is a type of computer virus known for its ability to disrupt your Internet browsing. It can redirect your Internet searches to random sites, disallow you from visiting certain Web sites, and change your Internet home page. In addition, it is able to slow your computer, decrease your available memory, and flood your computer with popup advertisements. When you detect the presence of such malicious hijacker, a complete removal is needed without any hesitation.

PriceChop Adware May Initiate the Following Symptoms:

1. It can not only change your web pages, but also alter other settings to add toolbars, pop-up advertisements, and bookmarks that you did not create.
2. It can modify the homepage settings of your web browser, more commonly by reducing your internet security options. And the worse thing is it prevents you from changing them back.
3. New toolbars or Favorites are installed that give you icons and links to web pages that you don’t want.
4. It may block you from visiting certain website you’d like to visit and show an error page instead.
5. It will display constant pop-up ads, sometimes in such large amounts that you are not able to close neither the ads nor the browser.

Malicious Browser Hijacker Manual Removal Guides:

PriceChop Pop-up hijacks your browser to redirect your web search results and changes the homepage and browser settings. To completely uninstall it from an infected system, manual removal is the first choice because sometimes antivirus software cannot pick up the exact computer threat timely or remove it permanently. Now most browser hijackers are quite similar to spyware and adware threats and therefore cannot be removed with the help of popular antivirus products. Users can follow the manual guide here to get rid of this browser hijacker completely.

1. Clear all the cookies of your affected browsers.

Since this tricky hijacker virus has the ability to use cookies for tracing and tracking the internet activity of users, it is suggested users delete all the cookies before a complete removal.

Google Chrome:

Click on the “Tools” menu and click the “Clear browsing data” button.
Select “Delete cookies and other site data” to delete all cookies from the list.

clear browser data

Internet Explorer:
Open Internet explorer window
Click the “Tools” button
Point to “safety” and then click “delete browsing history”
Tick the “cookies” box, then click “delete”

delete browsing history

Mozilla Firefox:

Click on Tools, then Options, select Privacy
Click “Remove individual cookies”
In the Cookies panel, click on “Show Cookies”
To remove a single cookie click on the entry in the list and click on the “Remove Cookie”
To remove all cookies click on the “Remove All Cookies” button

Remove All Cookie

2. End the malicious process from Task Manager.

Once PriceChop adware is installed, computer user may notice that CPU usage randomly jumps to 100 percent. At any time Windows always has many running processes. A process is an individual task that the computer runs. In general, the more processes, the more work the computer has to do and the slower it will run. If your system’s CPU spike is constant and remain at a constant 90-95%, users should check from Task Manager and see if there is a suspicious process occupying the system resources and then end it immediately.

(The name of the virus process can be random.)

Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to quickly bring up Task Manager Window:

task manager

3. Show hidden files and folders.

Open Folder Options by clicking the Start button, clicking Control Panel, clicking Appearance and Personalization, and then clicking Folder Options.

Click the View tab.

Under Advanced settings, click Show hidden files and folders, uncheck Hide protected operating system files (Recommended) and then click OK.

show-hidden-files

4. Remove all the malicious files related to PriceChop Pop-up manually.

%AppData%Local[random].exe
C:\Documents and Settings\LocalService\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\*.exe

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main StartPage
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

Video Shows You How to Safely Modify Windows Registry Editor:

If you see PriceChop ads on Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, then your computer must be attacked by an adware threat. Today we have a growing number of software developers who offer their goods as “sponsored” freeware (adware) until you pay to register. Adware is not malicious and should not be considered as a virus; however, it can give PC users annoyance and create a lot of troubles to interrupt their browsing activities. According to the statement of its publishers, PriceChop is designed to save money and time for those who prefer shopping on-line, however this is not the fact for the program can reduce your browser performance and display tons of pop-up ads, advertising, in-text links and other similar commercial content against your will. As we can see, PriceChop is an unwanted program that can be very intrusive so it is necessary to be removed from the computer at once.

Note: If you are not a computer expert and have no idea how to perform the removal, please contact experts from YooCare Online Tech Support for further help.

Published by & last updated on July 27, 2014 7:38 am

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