How to remove Hotdrinks pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Hotdrinks pop-up notices may appear out of the blue, covering the content of the site you went to or opening your web browser when you don’t wish it to be opened.

Clicking on the Hotdrinks ad can result in the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guideline of Hotdrinks popups removal in multiple ways, and also inspecting your personal computer for other malware existence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Hotdrinks manually may take hours and may damage your PC in the process. I recommend you to download GridinSoft Anti-Malware for threats removal. Allows to complete scan and cure your PC during the trial period.

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What are Hotdrinks pop-ups?

Hotdrinks popups are a consequence of adware action. Adware is a type of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which produces a large amount of profit for adware representatives. These advertisements might consist of sometimes shocking content, or have a web link to malicious content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the web content they are going to show – their single target is money.

Hotdrinks push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a very good, low-priced and also very effective advertising solution¹. It makes it possible for the vendor to link the customers’ attention to their website, and the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. When the person will get a pop-up alert that the TV set he likes to buy is offered at the online store he/she checked out earlier with a 15% discount, one will definitely use this possibility and get it. Considering the extremely low cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing method is a favorite thing among the advertising teams of big internet stores.

Nevertheless, such a rewarding plan could not be missed by virus creators. Ability to demonstrate the popup ads by force to the people of malware invasion is an excellent basis for malicious adjustments with the popup promotions. And Hotdrinks.xyz ads is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short summary for the Hotdrinks site

How have I got the Hotdrinks virus?

There are a number of methods of getting contaminated by the adware that cause the Hotdrinks popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware may also be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is supplied as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of individuals often use the uncertain programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, different apps that are free of cost, or even hacked programs. All of these types of software are dangerous, due to the fact that it is quite simple to include a Hotdrinks malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Hotdrinks popup virus may likewise be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the unusual site. Such web pages are typically full of colorful and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors often permit any promos to be posted on their web page. Hence, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor knows what will occur when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may additionally receive something far more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious ads.

The statistic shows that people dislike popup advertising more than other types of promotions

Potentially undesirable programs, like Hotdrinks popup virus may provoke a lot of troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-up notifications can show you the ads, where you are offered to get one more dubious application, or “a perfect anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the use of the last motto. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and fake antiviruses, popup-related banners are also chosen as a spreading way by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these promotions, they may be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Hotdrinks pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Hotdrinks adware elimination contains 2 parts. First, we need to deal with the malware, and after that repair the effects of its action. The removal task is very simple, because it may be executed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – security software that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. However, because of its large resources utilization, along with some defects that may be serious for some types of users, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its utilization is probably impossible. Moreover, a variety of trojan viruses can switch off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I would certainly advise you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven antivirus device that will certainly wipe out the malware from your personal computer and create an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s take care of Hotdrinks adware first.

Removing Hotdrinks popup virus with GridinSoft Anti-Malware

• Download and install GridinSoft Anti-Malware. After the installation, you will be offered to perform the Standard Scan. Approve this action.

• Standard scan checks the logical disk where the system files are stored, together with the files of programs you have already installed. The scan lasts up to 6 minutes.

• When the scan is over, you may choose the action for each detected virus. For all files of Hotdrinks malware the default option is “Delete”. Press “Apply” to finish the malware removal.

Now, when the computer is clean of viruses, we can proceed to the browser reset. You can do this step manually, as well as with the use of GridinSoft Anti-Malware.

Reset browser settings to default

Manual method of browser reset

To reset Edge, do the following steps :

1. Open “Settings and more” tab in upper right corner, then find here “Settings” button. In the appeared menu, choose “Reset settings” option :

2. After picking the Reset Settings option, you will see the following menu, stating about the settings which will be reverted to original :

For Mozilla Firefox, do the next actions :

1. Open Menu tab (three strips in upper right corner) and click the “Help” button. In the appeared menu choose “troubleshooting information” :

2. In the next screen, find the “Refresh Firefox” option :

After choosing this option, you will see the next message :

If you use Google Chrome

1. Open Settings tab, find the “Advanced” button. In the extended tab choose the “Reset and clean up” button :

2. In the appeared list, click on the “Restore settings to their original defaults” :

3. Finally, you will see the window, where you can see all the settings which will be reset to default :

Opera can be reset in the next way

1. Open Settings menu by pressing the gear icon in the toolbar (left side of the browser window), then click “Advanced” option, and choose “Browser” button in the drop-down list. Scroll down, to the bottom of the settings menu. Find there “Restore settings to their original defaults” option :


2. After clicking the “Restore settings…” button, you will see the window, where all settings, which will be reset, are shown :

When the web browsers are reset, you need to ensure that your web browser will be connected the proper DNS while connecting to the web page you need. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your desktop, then open it and fill it with the following lines³:

Find the hosts.txt file in C:/Windows/System32/drivers/etc directory. Rename this file to “hosts.old.txt” (to distinguish it from the new one), and then move the file you created on the desktop to this folder. Remove the hosts.old from this folder. Now you have your hosts file as good as new.

However, there is one problem that makes the things a lot harder to repair, specifically without the anti-malware program. Most of adware variants that are used to show you the Hotdrinks pop-up ads are altering the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your machine was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, significant lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and after that it will be back to the normal, up until you try to open settings one more time.

Reset your browser settings with GridinSoft Anti-Malware

To reset your browser with GridinSoft Anti-Malware, open the Tools tab, and click the “Reset browser settings” button.

You can see the list of the options for each browser. By default, they are set up in the manner which fits the majority of users. Press the “Reset” button (lower right corner). In a minute your browser will be as good as new.

The browser reset is recommended to perform through the antivirus tool by GridinSoft, because last is also able to reset the HOSTS file without any additional commands.

1. More about pop-up advertisements on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware overview and the reasons why I advise it for malware removal.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.