Hotspot Shield and Vista

If thou art a benighted soul like me, and suffer inexplicably to have one of thine computers burdened with the beast called “Vista“, then surely woes must betide thee. The most recent hair-pulling sessions come from a nice piece of software called, “Hotspot Shield“, which allows you to browse the internet somewhat anonymously. This is useful for accessing (free, legal) content that is nonetheless blocked for residents of your country.

For example, if you want to watch the latest clips from the upcoming episodes of Lost on ABC.com, you have to be a US resident to gain access. The same is true if you want to purchase some video content on iTunes. Hotspot Shield allows you to “pose” as an American in order to access this free content.

I don’t see that any copyrights are being infringed upon this way, and certainly no piracy is in effect. Actually, opening the borders this way helps people who sell online content, since more than just Americans want to buy video on iTunes.

But I digress.

If you run Vista and have also installed Hotspot Shield, your computer may be randomly rebooting and defaulting to the famous MicroSoft “blue screen of death“. I know mine is.

This is your solution:

1. Delete the file “hssdrv.sys” from your driver folder (C://windows/system32/driver/hssdrv.sys)
2. Uninstall “Hotspot Shield”

That should do the trick.

You may also want to:

1. Disable “Hotshield” on your device manager
2. Uncheck hotshield on your network properties
3. Run a registry cleaner to remove all traces of the beast.

Voila.