How to remove Hotestmedia.ru pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Hotestmedia.ru pop-up notices can show up out of the blue, covering the content of the site you went to or opening your browser when you don’t desire it to be opened.

Clicking on the Hotestmedia.ru promotion can lead to the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guideline of Hotestmedia.ru popups clearing in various ways, and also inspecting your personal computer for additional viruses presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Hotestmedia.ru 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 Hotestmedia.ru pop-ups?

Hotestmedia.ru popups are a consequence of adware activity. Adware is a sort of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which creates a massive volume of profit for adware distributors. These promotions may consist of explicit content, or have a link to harmful content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the material they are going to show – their single target is money.

Hotestmedia.ru push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a very good, cheap and also extremely productive marketing method¹. It makes it possible for the seller to link the buyers’ interest to their site, as well as the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the person will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to buy is available at the online store he/she checked out previously with a 15% price cut, one will certainly use this opportunity and purchase it. Taking into consideration the extremely low cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing instrument is a much-loved thing amidst the marketing departments of large online retail stores.

Nevertheless, such a successful strategy could not be missed by virus creators. Potential to demonstrate the popup ads by force to the targets of malware invasion is a great basis for malevolent manipulations with the popup ads. And Hotestmedia.ru promotions is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a summary for the Hotestmedia.ru

How have I got the Hotestmedia.ru virus?

There are a plenty of methods of getting infected by the adware that cause the Hotestmedia.ru popups tornado. A lion’s part of this computer virus instances is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software can also be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is delivered as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of users regularly work with the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various tools that are free, or even hacked programs. Every one of these types of applications are risky, because it is very simple to integrate a Hotestmedia.ru malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Hotestmedia.ru popup malware may also be hidden in the ad somewhere on the unusual website. Such sites are in most cases filled with colorful and blinking ads, and their owners often approve any type of promos to be placed on their page. Hence, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement contractor realizes what will happen when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can likewise get something far more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious promotions.

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

Potentially unwanted programs, like Hotestmedia.ru pop-up virus may initiate a wide range of different troubles on your computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-up notifications may show you the advertisements, where you are offered to download another dubious application, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is usually distributed under the last slogun. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and fake antiviruses, popup-related banners are also used as a spreading method by various trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these ads, they can be clicked by someone who also makes use of your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without information loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with antivirus programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Hotestmedia.ru pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Hotestmedia.ru adware clearing consists of 2 parts. Initially, we need to get rid of the malware, and then deal with the effects of its action. The removal task is pretty simple, due to the fact that it can be executed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus program that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. However, because of its huge resources usage, as well as some failures that may be critical for some types of users, Defender is oftentimes turned off by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. In addition, a variety of trojan viruses can shut off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I would certainly suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven anti-malware device that will certainly exterminate the malware from your system and also make an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s deal with Hotestmedia.ru adware first.

Removing Hotestmedia.ru 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 Hotestmedia.ru 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 definitely be connected the right DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your computer’s 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 trouble that makes the things much harder to restore, particularly without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Hotestmedia.ru pop-up advertisements are changing the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your machine was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the normal, up until you try to open settings once again.

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 ads on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and the reasons why I recommend it for malware elimination.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.