Karativa Virus

Karativa

Karativa is a browser attachment that will cause your browser to aggressively spam your screen with clickbait ads and pop-ups in order to earn Pay-Per-Click revenue for its developers. Karativa belongs to a widespread category of potentially unwanted apps known as adware.

What is Karativa?

Some of the most annoying types of software that you can install on your computer are the so-called adware applications. These applications are typically famous for their ability to spam the users’ main browser with hundreds of advertisements and intrusive sponsored messages such as pop-ups, banners, blinking boxes, pop-unders, new tab pages and even page-redirect links. Many web users end up with adware inside their Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari and other browsers mostly after they perform an installation of some software or update that carries the unwanted app under the advanced or the custom setup. The good news is that, despite being rather irritating, these applications are not malicious and can easily be uninstalled without any major damage to the system. In fact, they do not affect anything else on the computer except the default browser and do not hide deep inside the system like most computer viruses, Trojans or Ransomware for example.

Karativa.exe

The Karativa.exe virus adware app have the potential to cause a lot of browsing disturbance, irritation and unexpected ad interruptions because it tend to generate various aggressive commercial messages on all the web pages that you visit. That’s why most security experts advise users to remove Karativa.exe if they want to permanently save themselves from the ads invasion.

Unfortunately, this is where most people face difficulties because the adware like Karativa and Ultra Extension applications typically have the ability to reinstall themselves again and again if not removed properly. They usually do not have an uninstallation option like most regular programs. That’s why the best way to fully eliminate such software is to follow certain manual removal steps or use the help of a specialized professional removal tool. On this page, you can find a detailed removal guide and a trusted removal tool both of which are great options for removing one recently reported adware application named Karativa. If this is the application that is causing you disturbance, feel free to follow the instructions that follow and eliminate it with their help.

It is better to stay away from the randomly popping ads

If you are a person who is concerned about their system’s safety, you probably know that not everything that pops-up on your screen may be reliable and harmless. Many nasty computer threats use fake ads, misleading links, attractive-looking offers and appealing messages to trick you into clicking on them and getting you infected. In fact, most of the Trojan Horse and Ransomware infections happen this way. The hackers oftentimes find ways to sneak an intriguing-looking but malicious ad or a colorful misleading spam message inside the stream of regular ads that appear on your monitor and if you happen to click on that particular one, you may end up with a nasty virus. Taking this into consideration, you probably understand why keeping software such as Karativa on your system and letting it spam your monitor with randomly generated advertisements is not advisable and may hide certain risks. Therefore, we highly recommend that you have a look at our removal guide above and use the instructions there to uninstall the adware that is bothering you.

SUMMARY:

Remove Karativa Virus

If you want to remove Karativa in the quickest possible way, our recommendation is to start with cleaning up the affected browser from any rogue extensions and add-ons that the adware might have added there:

1. Head to the affected browser’s icon and start it.
2. Next, click on the main menu button (typically found top right) and select the More Tools (or Add-ons) option from the list of options that slides down.
3. Once in it, search for a tab named Extensions and open it.
4. As soon as you detect extensions that look unfamiliar to you or you believe are linked to Karativa, make sure that you remove them from the browser.
5. If needed, first disable the unwanted extensions that then click on the Remove button next to them again.
6. If you have other browsers in the system, make sure that you remove any potentially unwanted or questionable-looking extensions from them too.

If you are lucky, this will successfully rid you of the adware. However, if the intrusive software has made changes in the Registry or your DNS settings, you may need to remove those changes along with any entries related to them. The detailed removal guide explains exactly how to do that, so make sure that you follow its instructions if you want to fully get rid of Karativa.

During the steps in this guide, you will be required to restart your PC. Thus, in order to get back to this page and complete its instructions, we recommend that you click on the Bookmark icon and save this removal guide in your browser.

WARNING! READ CAREFULLY BEFORE PROCEEDING!

Use the Winkey and R key combination to open a Run window on the screen. In it type the appwiz.cpl command and click on the OK button.

The Programs and Features window should immediately open.

Once in it, search for applications that look bogus and have been installed close to the time when Karativa first appeared on your system. If you detect anything like that, select the application and click on the Uninstall button that appears at the top. After that, carefully follow all uninstallation instructions.

Pay special attention to options that ask your confirmation for the removal of additionally installed components, especially if they are linked to the adware that you want to remove.

Next, click on the Start Menu and type msconfig in the search bar.

Press Enter from the keyboard and System Configuration should open:

Your job here is to click on the Startup tab and search the list of Startup Items for entries that could be linked to the adware that you want to remove. If you find such entries, you need to disable them by unchecking their checkmark.

The same should be done for any entries with “Unknown” Manufacturer if you find out that they have something to do with your disturbance.

Press CTRL, SHIFT, and ESC keyboard keys together and this will start the Windows Task Manager.

In it, go straight to the Processes tab (the “Details” tab on Win 8 and 10) and search for processes with odd names that can’t be linked to any legitimate program that you are running on your computer. Also, pay attention to resource-intensive processes that are using way too much CPU power and Memory without any particular reason, and if you find anything that looks suspicious, right-click on it and select Open File Location.

Next, scan all the files that you see in that file location with the help of the free online virus scanner below:

Each file will be scanned with up to 64 antivirus programs to ensure maximum accuracy

This scanner is free and will always remain free for our website's users.

This file is not matched with any known malware in the database. You can either do a full real-time scan of the file or skip it to upload a new file. Doing a full scan with 64 antivirus programs can take up to 3-4 minutes per file.

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In case the scanned files get flagged as dangerous, end the processes that they are related to (right-click on it >>>End Process), and delete the folder they are stored at. 

Note: Before stopping any process from the Processes tab, it is a good idea to research it online to ensure that it really is part of the danger and you are not ending a process related to a legitimate program.

Before you proceed with the next instructions, we recommend that you Reboot your PC in Safe Mode (please follow the instructions from the link if you don’t know how to do that).

With Safe Mode On, the system will not allow any adware-related processes from starting automatically in the background in case you didn’t succeed in stopping them all in the previous step.

Open a new Run window on the screen (Press Winkey and R)   and then paste the following line in it:

notepad %windir%/system32/Drivers/etc/hosts

As soon as you press Enter from the keyboard, the Hosts file will open. Search for Localhost in it and check if some strange-looking IP addresses have been added there:

If you find anything suspicious, below “Localhost” in your Hosts file, drop us a comment with a copy of the IPs in question. Once we take a look at them, we will be able to tell you if they represent any danger or need to be removed.

Next, type Network Connections in the search bar of the Start Menu and select the first result.

In the new window that opens, go to the icon of the Network Adapter that your computer is currently connected to and right-click on it.

A pop-up menu will appear. Select Properties.

 In the newly-opened window, highlight Internet Protocol Version 4 (ICP/IP), and as soon as the Properties button at the bottom becomes active, click it.

Select Obtain DNS server address automatically and click on the Advanced button.

In the new window, open the DNS tab and remove everything that has been added in the field.

Make sure that you save all your changes by clicking OK on all open windows.

Attention! In this step, you will be dealing with Registry entries. Any changes and deletions in the registry hide a high risk of system corruption, thus, only delete items that you are 100% sure are part of the adware that you want to remove. If you have doubts or concerns, please drop us a comment so we can assist you.

Type Regedit in the windows search bar found inside the Start menu. Open the first result and then call up a Find window on the screen by pressing the CTRL and F keyboard keys together.

Write the name of the adware, in your case Karativa, in the Find window and click on the Find Next button. This will perform a search in the Registry for entries that have been added by Karativa without your knowledge.

If anything is found, delete it with a right-click. Then, perform a new search with the same name until no more results show up.

Next, use the left sidebar to manually navigate to each of these directories:

• HKEY_CURRENT_USER—-Software—–Random Directory.
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER—-Software—Microsoft—-Windows—CurrentVersion—Run– Random
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER—-Software—Microsoft—Internet Explorer—-Main—- Random

Search for any sub-folders with odd and long names and if you believe they are part of the adware, delete them.

In this final step, you need to go to each of your installed browsers and remove any changes that could have been made there by the adware.

For that, right-click on the shortcut icon of the browser and select Properties from the pop-up list of options.

In the newly-opened Properties window open the Shortcut tab.

If you find that anything new has been added after .exe in the Target section, make sure that you delete it and click on the OK button to save the changes you have made.

Remove Karativa from Chrome:

Next, close the browser (in our example we are using Chrome) and go to this location:

 C:/Users/!!!!USER NAME!!!!/AppData/Local/Google/Chrome/User Data. 

Select the “Default” folder and change its name to Backup Default by right-clicking on it.

Save the new name and restart the browser.

  Remove Karativa from Internet Explorer:

If you are seeking how to remove Karativa from IE, simply start the browser, click   and go to Manage Add-ons.

Next, make sure that you Disable any add-ons and extensions that you find relatable to the adware.

Also, don’t forget to check the homepage for changes by going to  —–> Internet Options. If the homepage address has been changed, delete it and write a new one that you trust, then click on Apply.

 Remove Karativa from Firefox:

If Firefox is affected by Karativa, click    > Add-ons > Extensions and remove any potentially unwanted extensions that you find there.

In most cases, after you complete the guide, Karativa will be gone. If that is not the case for you, however, you should consider downloading a professional anti-virus program (like the one we recommend here) and scan your PC with it. You can also try our free online virus scanner and ask us any questions that you may have regarding the removal of Karativa in the comment section below.