Windows Active HotSpot Removal Guide

Windows Active HotSpot is a fake antivirus program which is designed to mislead users into buying its registered version to eliminate the threats it has “detected” on their computers. Its ultimate goal is to cheat money from the innocent users. When you notice that your computer has attacked by Windows Active HotSpot, you have to take immediate action to get rid of it from your machine in order to avoid some unnecessary losses. This post will tell more information about the fake antivirus program and give the useful guide to remove this threat.

Information about the Fake Antivirus Program

As we have mentioned above, Windows Active HotSpot is not a legitimate antivirus program; instead, it is rogue program that plays a trick on computer users and hoax them out of money. Usually, this rogue program comes together with free software which is downloaded from trustless sources. In some cases, it can be downloaded onto the targeted computers when users visit malicious websites and click on the links or pop-up windows in the websites. Also, it can take the chance to slip into the computers as users open spam email attachments. Anyway, this rogue program can make use of the system vulnerabilities to infect users’ computers.

Once entering users’ computers, this rogue program will start its payloads. It first injects its own registry entries into the Windows registry, so that it can automatically run before the Windows is launched. Then, it makes some changes to the system settings in order to block the security programs installed on users’ computers. After finishing those tasks, this rogue program starts to run a bogus scan on the infected computers, showing that it is a security tool which is able to scan for malware. Later, it begins to pop up some horrible alerts, which claim that users’ computers have been infected by many Trojans, worms and spywares, and further recommend users to activate Windows Active HotSpot to get ultimate protection against the threats on their computers. However, to “activate” the program means to “buy” its registered version. And the fact is that, this so-called antivirus program is specially created by cyber hackers with the intention of ripping users off. Even though users buy the registered version as required, they will not be able to remove the real threats existing on their computers. If some unwary users are deceived by the rogue program and pay money to purchase the registered version, they would suffer from money loss, because the rogue program is able to steal users’ credit usernames and passwords for the remote hackers. It is clear that Windows Active HotSpot is far from helping remove threats, it brings other trouble to users.

Useful Guide to Remove the Rogue Program

The following are the steps to manually remove the fake antivirus program from your computer. If you are proficient in computer, you can take the steps below to accomplish the manual removal. However, if you are a novice user and have no experience of dealing with processes, files and registry entries, we highly recommend you to download and use an automatic removal tool to remove Windows Active HotSpot from your machine.

Step 1: Remove the rogue program via Windows uninstall utility.

Windows 7
1. Go to Start > Control Panel > Uninstall a program.

2. Search for the rogue program in the list, select it, click on “Uninstall” and remove it by following the prompts.

Windows 8
1. Press Windows key + W key together.

2. Type “uninstall” into the search field and click “Uninstall a program”.

3. Look for Windows Active HotSpot; remove it by clicking on it and clicking “Uninstall/Change”.

Step 2: Show hidden files and folders.

1. Click the Start menu and select Control Panel.

2. Click “Appearance and Personalization”, and then click “Folder Options”.

3. Click the “View” tab.
4. Under Advanced settings, click “Show hidden files, folders and drives”, uncheck “Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)” and then click OK.

Step 3: Stop process of the rogue program via Windows Task Manger.

1. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL together to open the Windows Task Manager.
2. Go to “Processes”, search for the process of Windows Active HotSpot, select it and click on the “End Process” button to terminate it.

Step 4: Remove the rogue program related files.

1. Open the Windows Explorer, type the rogue program name into the search box on the right top of the window and press Enter.

2. Once you find out any files related to the rogue program, delete them all.

Step 5: Delete all registry entries associated with the Windows Active HotSpot.

1. Press Windows Key + R key together to open the Run command box.
2. Type “regedit” into the box, and click OK.

3. When the Registry Editor is opened, look for all registry entries associated with the rogue program and delete them.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run “[random].exe”
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\[rogue program name]

Are you a novice user and don’t have much experience in computer operation? Don’t worry. A better option for non-skillful computer users is to download and run a professional removal tool to get rid of Windows Active HotSpot. Actually, it is a daunting task for novice users to accomplish the manual removal task, since it involves several complicated steps. If users make any mistakes (like delete some important files mistakenly) during the removal process, there would be some problems occur and make the system unusable. While using an automatic removal tool, users can avoid much trouble. With advanced and latest algorithm, the removal tool can detect out files that are really malicious and then forcibly delete them out of users’ PCs. Anyway, a good removal tool can save users much time and let them be free of worries.