Hotstartsearch.com - How to remove

Hotstartsearch.com is a browser hijacker that changes your browser settings and causes lots of inconveniences on your computer. The program infiltrates into computers together with free applications. For this reason you should be very careful when you are installing anything to your computer from the Internet. You can easily avoid programs like Hotstartsearch.com if you pay attention to every installation step. One of them offers adding additional programs. You have to deselect any unknown applications, otherwise they will be downloaded automatically.

If you have already gotten Hotstartsearch on your computer, these are the main symptoms of its existence. First of all, your home page and default search provider will be replaced with the web page of its own. Then you will quite often start experiencing redirections to unknown websites. Your search results will be modified too. Hotstartsearch.com displays many ads and commercial websites expecting to create bigger traffic. One more thing that you cannot notice that easily is that the program collects your browsing history and sends this data to the remote server. Later this information can be sold to the third parties that use it to display targeted ads.

Hotstartsearch.com is not malicious however it is definitely annoying. It badly complicates your computer work and can even lead to being infected with serious malware in case you are redirected to some dangerous website of click on an infected link. Remove Hotstartsearch.com from your system as soon as you notice it on your computer. Go to Start -> Control Panel, click on “Uninstall Program” on Programs area. Look for any components related to Hotstartsearch.com on a list of programs and uninstall them. Depending on what browser you are using, follow the instructions below:

For IE:

• Open IE and go to ‘Tools‘ → ”Manage Add-ons’.
• Choose ‘Toolbars and Extensions’ and uninstall everything related to Hotstartsearch.com from the list.
• Choose ‘Search Providers’ → choose the search engine you used before and make it your default search provider. Additionally, select ‘Web Search’, click ‘Disable suggestions’ to disable it.
• Go ‘Tools’ → ‘Internet Options’ and select ‘General’ tab. Click ‘Use default’ or enter your own website name, google.com or other. Finally, click ‘OK’ to save the changes.

For Mozilla Firefox:

• Open Mozilla Firefox, go ‘Tools’ → ‘Add-ons’.
• Choose ‘Extensions’ → Hotstartsearch.com and click ‘Uninstall’.
• Go ‘Tools’ → ‘Options’. Finally, reset the startup homepage or change it to google.com.

For Google Chrome:

• Click on the icon ‘Customize and control Google Chrome’, select ‘Options’.
• Choose ‘Basic’ Options and change Google Chrome homepage to google.com or any other browser and then click the ‘Manage search engines…’ button.
• Choose ‘Google’ and make it your default search engine.

You are also recommended to scan your computer using a reputable antispyware program, for example, Spyhunter. Don’t forget upgrading it to its latest version to guarantee that all threats will be gone.

TopRemove shortcut hijack (all browsers) (optional): If your browser opens Hotstartsearch.com page on startup only, try this:

• Right click on your browser icon. Choose Properties;
  
• Open Short cut tab;
  
• Delete Hotstartsearch.com part from target field.

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Manual removal