Wednesday, May 28, 2014

How to Get Rid of Hot-finder.com Virus (Removal Guide)



It is not difficult to remove Hot-finder.com from your browser. Please take you time to read this post and follow the removal guide below to solve your problem.

The Characteristics of Hot-finder.com

Hot-finder.com is defined as a browser hijacker that stealthily enters your computer via some free programs, malicious websites and spam email attachments. Similar to other browser hijackers like Mysearch.Sweetpacks.com, Hot-finder.com will hijack various web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. After taking over your browser successfully, this browser hijacker replaces your homepage and search engine. Apart from that, this Hot-finder.com can also display a variety of ads at your browser and bring lots of inconveniences to you. Each time you log in the Internet and visit some websites, tons of banners, text-links and ads pop up and nearly cover the whole screen. 

If you carelessly click on them, you’ll be led to third party websites which offer commercial products and services. This Hot-finder.com is very annoying and pesky because it badly interrupts your browsing activities. Moreover, this browser hijacker will add many harmful programs to your PC for an evil purpose. Once this browser hijacker reduces your system resources, it will be able to slow down your computer performance.  All in all, this browser hijacker is not a virus, but it can worsen your PC to a certain extent.  In order to protect your computer, you’d better remove Hot-finder.com.

Hot-finder.com Manual Removal Guide

Step 1: Press Ctrl+ALT+Del keys at the same time to open Task Manager. End the process of Hot-finder.com.

Step 2: Remove the files of Hot-finder.com. Open Start Menu and then go to Control Panel. Then use the search bar to look for Folder Option. Check Show hidden files and folders and un-check Hide protected operating system files (Recommended) in the View tab of Folder Option window.
%CommonAppData%\.exe
C:\Windows\Temp\.exe
%temp%\.exe
C:\Program Files\

Step 3: Delete Hot-finder.com registry entries from your PC. Click start button and search for regedit to open Registry Editor.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Wpm
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main "Default_Page_URL" = "http://hot-finder.com /?type=hp&ts=&from=tugs&uid="
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\TabbedBrowsing "NewTabPageShow" = "1"

Step 4: Click Start button and select Control Panel. Then click Programs, uninstall all suspicious programs from your PC.

Reset the settings of Internet Explorer

1. Open the IE, click the wrench icon and select Internet Options.
2. Move to Advance tab, click the Reset button.
3. Tick the Delete personal settings check-box and click Reset button.
4. In General tab, you can add a new URL on Home page box and set it as your default homepage.

Reset the settings of Google Chrome

1. Open the Chrome, click the three stripes icon and select Settings.
2. Scroll down to the end of the configuration page, search for Show advanced settings.
3. Look at Reset browser settings button and click it.
4. Reset browser settings via clicking the reset button.
5. Scroll down the page again and look for Open a specific page or set of pages, click on their Set Pages. Another window will show up. Here you will seethe bunch of URLs under “Set pages”. Delete all them and then enter only one which you want to use as your home page.

Reset the settings of Mozilla Firefox

1. Open Firefox, and click the Firefox button.
2. Select Help and click Troubleshooting Information.
3. Click the Reset Firefox button.