HBInst.exe
(Hotbar.com)
HotBar installer. HotBar is a piece of software which supposedly enhances and personalizes your Internet and E-mail applications. Typically you can have hundreds of backgrounds, brighten your browser with colourful images, and enhance your surfing experience with Smart Buttons. More details at www.HotBar.com. (Be careful NOT to click on the big yellow arrow which says "I have read and I agree to the terms of use" as HotBar will then install automatically !!)
Recommendation :
Do not use under any circumstance in a business environment. The first time we came across HotBar we were trying to solve slow Internet Explorer loading and sluggish Internet Access Performance, in addition to unexplained crashes of the PC. There is no doubt that having HotBar installed does make your browser pretty; however, after first investigating everything else, we eventually told the user we would have to de-install HotBar to see if that cured the problems. It did ! Further investigations of the version of HotBar we were using then also showed that this process accesses the Internet when you are connected, and it constantly communicates back to a specific IP address. This activity is explained when one takes the time to read the License Agreement which states, unequivocally, "Hotbar collects and stores information about the web pages you view and the data you enter in search engine search fields while using the software. Hotbar uses this information to determine which ads and buttons to display on your hotbar toolbars and which ads to show in your browser". In short, this is what we call adware. This alone explains the sluggish Internet performance of a PC when HotBar is installed, as any software which connects back to ad servers and then pulls up ads, automatically decreases Internet browsing performance. For all these reasons our recommendation is that you do not use HotBar. To remove HotBar download SpyBot Search & Destroy from our Downloads page.