Driver Fixer - How to remove

Driver Fixer is a driver-updating utility for the PC that’s associated with illegitimate advertising networks and acts as a trojan horse for other malicious programs. Driver Fixer, like many other driver-updating utilities floating online, should not be given access to your computer because it’s just not safe.

Luckily, Driver Fixer is detected and quarantined by most antivirus programs. It should be viewed with suspicion, even before being downloaded. The usefulness of driver updaters is already questionable, and on top of that, there are fake driver updaters out there (like Advanced Driver Booster), and some that try to modify your registry (like Driver Tonic). And wouldn’t you know it, it’s hard to find an optimizer, registry cleaner, or a driver updater that doesn’t use bundling and malicious ads to spread to computers regardless of the wishes of the users.

But is Driver Fixer as bad as the other programs? Yes, unfortunately, it is.

How Driver Fixer is distributed

Online, Driver Fixer is promoted by adware, such as install.notify-service.com, which likes to spam people with endless unwanted pop-up notifications to a variety of dangerous and harmful websites. Adware doesn’t just exist as desktop applications (though these still are a threat), sites can hijack your browser without installing anything on your computer. That’s why, if Driver Fixer was recommended to you by a pop-up or the driver-fixer.com site was opened without you seeking it out, check your browser. Check your notification permissions: are any suspicious websites on the list?

Driver Fixer partners with other advertising networks sometimes associated with malware, such as Adcash and PopCash. While these ad-networks aren’t bad as the online adware from the previous paragraph, they are also willing to work with companies and products that aren’t necessarily safe. That’s why their ads end up promoting malware so often. If you found Driver Fixer thanks to some online ads, I can only advise you to be careful online and consider using a website that takes its visitors’ security more seriously.

If you want to avoid adware-promoted malware in the future, here are a few things you can do:

• Familiarize yourself with modern adware and avoid it.
• Know how to end malicious processes to get out of programs which lock your screen.
• Manage your drivers and your computer yourself, with inbuilt tools.

Most optimizers rely on Windows built-in tools and functions to do everything anyway, so they are very unnecessary. That said, Driver Fixer is more than just unnecessary — it can be outright harmful.

Why Driver Fixer shouldn’t be installed

First of all, Driver Fixer is very strongly disliked by antivirus programs. The files distributed by Driver Fixer’s home page include this and this one, among others. Usually, a browser with normal security settings and a computer with an antivirus program would be enough to stop this infection. However, malware developers always come up with new versions, and antivirus experts take time to catch up. Meanwhile, innocent people’s devices are getting infected.

The main reason for Driver Fixer being detected by all these antivirus programs is its behavior of installing unwanted programs in the background. While not really dangerous to your system itself, Driver Fixer acts as a trojan for dangerous and unwanted programs. That behavior is not okay, even if innocent or even helpful programs were being smuggled into your device. You should be in control of what you install, not Driver Fixer.

But what if, thanks to Driver Fixer, some serious malware was installed on your machine? An adware virus would seriously raise the number of ads you have to deal with by injecting them in the browser, showing them on your desktop, and opening various websites against your will. A miner would hijack your CPU and GPU for some criminal’s gain, making your computer work very hard and run quite hot. Some fake antivirus or optimizer would show bogus warnings and alerts and ask you to buy the paid version to “fix” the nonexistent “problems”.

There is also the fact that you probably don’t even need a driver updater. After all, there is honestly no harm in using a few old drivers. Unlike software, drivers are meant for a particular piece of hardware. If the hardware is functioning well, that means that the driver is good. Why fix something that isn’t broken? Microsoft also updates your drivers, but only after testing to make sure that nothing will break (and even they make some mistakes). Driver Fixer doesn’t have the resources to test everything, and there is an incredible amount of hardware out there that needs to be cataloged — Driver Fixer is bound to make some mistakes. You’re safer updating your drivers yourself, manually.

How to remove Driver Fixer

Uninstall it and scan your device with an antivirus application to catch and quarantine all the malware that Driver Fixer snuck into your PC: if your usual antivirus program isn’t doing this, I can suggest Spyhunter, or another application. Driver Fixer should be simple to uninstall manually, though, and you can access it using the Control Panel.

Make sure to update your operating system, browser, and your antivirus program and set up a backup of your files if you want your computer to be secured against viruses.

Automatic Malware removal tools

How to remove Driver Fixer using Windows Control Panel

Many hijackers and adware like Driver Fixer install some of their components as regular Windows programs as well as additional software. This part of malware can be uninstalled from the Control Panel. To access it, do the following.

• Start→Control Panel (older Windows) or press Windows Key→Search and enter Control Panel and then press Enter (Windows 8, Windows 10).
• Choose Uninstall Program (if you don't see it, click in the upper right next to "View by" and select Category).
• Go through the list of programs and select entries related to Driver Fixer . You can click on "Name" or "Installed On" to reorder your programs and make Driver Fixer easier to find.
• Click the Uninstall button. If you're asked if you really want to remove the program, click Yes.
• In many cases anti-malware programs are better at detecting related parasites, thus I recommend installing Spyhunter to identify other programs that might be a part of this infection.