How to Remove Winter Waldo Adware

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Winter Waldo is the nth deceptive application out there. According to its official website, this tool provides “the best frosty games”. It promises to help you “play snowy, wintery, blizzary games while you browse”. According to out research team, though, Winter Waldo is nothing but a sneaky infection. Yes, this thing is a nasty PC virus that needs to be removed ASAP. Classified as an adware parasite, the Winter Waldo Virus has many tricks to offer. For starters, it injects all your browsers with commercials. Useless, irritating, obnoxious commercials. That’s what a typical adware-type infection does. As soon as the Winter Waldo lands on board, it adds a browser extension. By doing so, this pest successfully takes over. Your own browsing experience is no longer up to you. It’s up to the parasite’s developers. Hackers wouldn’t think twice before they cause you damage. They actually use the pay-per-click mechanism to gain revenue online. Yes, that’s why they developed the Winter Waldo parasite in the first place. Unfortunately, it’s all about the money. Every single commercial generated by the virus is sponsored and potentially very dangerous. Under no circumstances is a sponsored pop-up to be trusted. You could easily compromise your PC further by clicking the Winter Waldo ads. All of them might be hiding a vicious intruder so be cautious. No matter how attractive and harmless these pop-ups might claim to be, ignore them. Take no chances with this nuisance. As mentioned, its one goal is to generate web traffic to some specific websites. Your security is completely out of the picture. Remember, the Winter Waldo ads are unreliable. They are sponsored, tailored and immensely unsafe. Restrain yourself from clicking any of these discounts/coupons/product deals/offers. Those were never really supposed to save you time or money while shopping online. If anything, the Winter Waldo advertisements only help its creators make money. In order not the become hackers’ sponsor, take action now. In addition, this program spies on your data and poses a threat to your privacy. It mainly steals browsing-related information such as usernames, passwords, email addresses. Your browsing history gets constantly spied on as well. However, the virus could get to some personally identifiable data. To prevent identity theft, simply delete Winter Waldo. You have no reason to tolerate this infection’s trickery. Get rid of it and regain control over your hijacked online experience.

How did I get infected with?

You didn’t download the parasite on purpose, did you? Not many people install malware voluntarily. The thing with Winter Waldo is, this tool has an official website. That means you might have gotten tricked into thinking it’s a legitimate program. However, the most commonly malware infiltration methods don’t even include your authorization. Next time you download programs off of the Internet, watch out for infections. There might be something malicious attached to the safe software. There might be a whole bunch of dangerous parasites so be careful. Unless you don’t want to compromise you own PC, pay attention. If you notice something you don’t want installed, don’t install it. Yes, it’s that simple. Stay away from unverified freeware and shareware bundles. Always be cautious in the installation process and don’t skip steps. Check out the Terms and Conditions as well. This may not be a fun activity but it could help you protect your device. Don’t underestimate hackers’ creativity when it comes to spreading malware on the Web. Make sure you prevent installation and save yourself a headache.

Why is this dangerous?

The infection turns surfing the Web into a cyber battlefield. This parasite generates a constant parade of sponsored and unsafe pop-up ads. Its advertisements come in all shapes imaginable. Also, the virus messes with your default, preferred browser settings. Winter Waldo’s plugin works with Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Internet Explorer. Now that your PC is infected, you end up exposed to potential threats. Stay away from the commercials, third-party ads and even software updates you might come across. Don’t forget there is a stealthy infection on board. Apart from making modifications behind your back, Winter Waldo serves as a back door to malware. It redirects you to unknown websites and slows down the PC speed significantly. The adware causes your browsers to freeze/crash. Your Internet connection might become unstable as well due to the parasite’s tricks. To delete Winter Waldo manually, please follow our detailed removal guide down below.

How to Remove Winter Waldo virus

The Winter Waldo infection is specifically designed to make money to its creators one way or another. The specialists from various antivirus companies like Bitdefender, Kaspersky, Norton, Avast, ESET, etc. advise that there is no harmless virus.

If you perform exactly the steps below you should be able to remove the Winter Waldo infection. Please, follow the procedures in the exact order. Please, consider to print this guide or have another computer at your disposal. You will NOT need any USB sticks or CDs.

WARNING! Stopping the wrong file or deleting the wrong registry key may damage your system irreversibly.
If you are feeling not technical enough just use Spyhunter Professional Malware Removal Tool to deal with the problem!
>>Download SpyHunter – a Professional Remover.

Please, keep in mind that SpyHunter’s scanner tool is free. To remove the Winter Waldo infection, you need to purchase its full version.

STEP 1: Track down Winter Waldo in the computer memory

STEP 2: Locate Winter Waldo startup location

STEP 3: Delete Winter Waldo traces from Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer

STEP 4: Undo the damage done by the virus

STEP 1: Track down Winter Waldo in the computer memory

• Open your Task Manager by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+ESC keys simultaneously
• Carefully review all processes and stop the suspicious ones.

• Write down the file location for later reference.

Step 2: Locate Winter Waldo startup location

Reveal Hidden Files

• Open any folder
• Click on “Organize” button
  
• Choose “Folder and Search Options”
• Select the “View” tab
• Select “Show hidden files and folders” option
• Uncheck “Hide protected operating system files”
• Click “Apply” and “OK” button

Clean Winter Waldo virus from the windows registry

• Once the operating system loads press simultaneously the Windows Logo Button and the R key.

• A dialog box should open. Type “Regedit”

• WARNING! be very careful when editing the Microsoft Windows Registry as this may render the system broken.

Depending on your OS (x86 or x64) navigate to:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run] or
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run] or
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run]

• and delete the display Name: [RANDOM]

• Then open your explorer and navigate to: %appdata% folder and delete the malicious executable.

Clean your HOSTS file to avoid unwanted browser redirection

Navigate to %windir%/system32/Drivers/etc/host

If you are hacked, there will be foreign IPs addresses connected to you at the bottom. Take a look below:

STEP 3 : Clean Winter Waldo traces from Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer

• Open Google Chrome

• In the Main Menu, select Tools then Extensions
• Remove the Winter Waldo by clicking on the little recycle bin
• Reset Google Chrome by Deleting the current user to make sure nothing is left behind

• Open Mozilla Firefox

• Press simultaneously Ctrl+Shift+A
• Disable the unwanted Extension
• Go to Help
• Then Troubleshoot information
• Click on Reset Firefox

• Open Internet Explorer

• On the Upper Right Corner Click on the Gear Icon
• Click on Internet options
• go to Toolbars and Extensions and disable the unknown extensions
• Select the Advanced tab and click on Reset

• Restart Internet Explorer

Step 4: Undo the damage done by Winter Waldo

This particular Virus may alter your DNS settings.

Attention! this can break your internet connection. Before you change your DNS settings to use Google Public DNS for Winter Waldo, be sure to write down the current server addresses on a piece of paper.

To fix the damage done by the virus you need to do the following.

• Click the Windows Start button to open the Start Menu, type control panel in the search box and select Control Panel in the results displayed above.
• go to Network and Internet
• then Network and Sharing Center
• then Change Adapter Settings
• Right-click on your active internet connection and click properties. Under the Networking tab, find Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4). Left click on it and then click on properties. Both options should be automatic! By default it should be set to “Obtain an IP address automatically” and the second one to “Obtain DNS server address automatically!” If they are not just change them, however if you are part of a domain network you should contact your Domain Administrator to set these settings, otherwise the internet connection will break!!!

You must clean all your browser shortcuts as well. To do that you need to

• Right click on the shortcut of your favorite browser and then select properties.

• in the target field remove Winter Waldo argument and then apply the changes.
• Repeat that with the shortcuts of your other browsers.
• Check your scheduled tasks to make sure the virus will not download itself again.

How to Permanently Remove Winter Waldo Virus (automatic) Removal Guide

Please, have in mind that once you are infected with a single virus, it compromises your system and let all doors wide open for many other infections. To make sure manual removal is successful, we recommend to use a free scanner of any professional antimalware program to identify possible registry leftovers or temporary files.