"Windows 10 Driver Optimizer" virus? trojan?


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Old 10-08-16, 08:41 PM
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"Windows 10 Driver Optimizer" virus? trojan?

This is a full page pop up ad that appears at least once a day while online, and I'm pretty sure it piggy-backed on one of the many third party download files my son got for his flight simulator program last week. The URL seems to be driversupport.com (1 or 2 s's, don't remember). Looks just like a Microsoft site. I have not installed the program and it doesn't appear in my list of installed programs. I'm running Windows 10 (unfortunately) and primarily on Chrome. A quick Google search just says find the program and uninstall it. Not helpful. I have used Avira free A/V for a couple of years, weekly scans rarely finds anything, and Malwarebytes found a few things, a second scan came back clean, but pop up still appears.

I've not tried switching to Foxfire or IE to see if it occurs there, but I'm used to Chrome and would like to continue with it. Another answer was to block the URL in the internet options, but that's just a work-around; I'd like to get rid of whatever is allowing it to appear in the first place. Ideas?
 
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Old 10-08-16, 08:56 PM
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I won't tell you what I think of these wonderful little browser hitchhikers but I had a particularly nasty one called Ads by Salus. I could not control the pop ups and could not eradicate the program with all the usual spyware programs. It was present in all my browsers. I spent a week trying every available cure.

The only way I could get rid of it was with a reg edit program.
You can run this program and just LOOK at your registry to see if the program is present there.
If you find it the program will help you remove it.

It's a free download and is 100% effective.
Hijackthis.com | Spyware Removal | Internet Security | Registry Clean-up


Just as a word of advice to other readers..... if you don't understand registry editing.... don't attempt it. I had the help of a member here.
 
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Old 10-08-16, 09:04 PM
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Thank you kindly for the quick response pj. I've heard of Hijackthis for years. I'll try that.
 
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Old 10-08-16, 10:25 PM
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Another thing you can try first is to try to remove the extension in Chrome to do so look for three black dots on the right hand corner of your chrome browser. Now look for Tools and then click on Extensions and see if you find Windows 10 Driver Optimizer. I personally don't care for Chrome myself because every time I open Chrome it seems to want to add some new software that I don't want so instead I use Firefox. I also switched the default search engine to Bing instead of Google in Firefox as I like it better.

I would use Hijackthis as a last resort and if you are unsure of what to keep or delete copy the results and post them here so we can look things over. I am not a computer professional but I have used the program before and done some light editing of the registry so I can help and there are others here who have used the program so with our combined help it should be fine.
 
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Old 10-15-16, 06:14 AM
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Post the output from Hijack This & I'll tell you what to delete or run regedit & search for the site, in the registry. Delete it from there.
 
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Old 10-17-16, 07:21 AM
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I'd use Malwarebytes Anti-Malware before the Hijak product. They have a free version.
 
 

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