Wednesday, February 13, 2008

How to Remove Spyware and Adware

How to Remove Spyware
Do you have a spyware infestation? Do you know what actions to take once your laptop or PC is infected with spyware, ad-ware or viruses?

It's estimated that around 90 percent of computer systems are infected with some form of spyware, ad-ware or virus. With odds like that, it's very likely that your computer either now has, or will soon manifest signs of a system take-over.

What is Spyware and What Does it Do?

Spyware is generally defined as software that secretly takes advantage of vulnerabilities in a user’s computer system to the benefit of an unseen third party. The name spyware comes from the fact that the software often records information about your computer and transmits that information covertly to a remote server or intruder. Spyware can make your laptop or PC slow down, crash, get infected with viruses and worms and even cause hard drive erasure. This is on top of collecting sensitive data like your passwords, logins and banking or credit card details.
  • You're observing inexplicable slowdowns and crashes, especially when searching the Internet or running a security or anti-virus program
  • Your Internet web browser opens to an unknown homepage, returns unanticipated search results, or directs you to an unsolicited website
  • You find that your mouse, keyboard, monitor, or CD/DVD drive is unresponsive or acting unpredictably
  • Pop-up or pop-under browser windows are opening when you are not surfing the Web, or are opening so often as to be distracting
  • Your security or anti-virus programs are not functioning, and/or you cannot visit security-related web sites (eg. www.symantec.com)
  • A program or application that you've tried to uninstall reappears when you reboot your computer
  • Your PC seems to "have a mind of its own" and is difficult or impossible to control

Do you have some or all of these signs? If you do, you definitely have a spyware/malware situation on your hands and need to take action to identify and remove them before they do damage to your system.

Ways to Remove Spyware

1. Reformat Your Hard Drive
I DON'T recommend you start with this method, but the easiest and most obvious way of removing malicious pests from your PC is to reformat your hard disk. In the event that you turn on your PC and the infestation is so rampant as to make using your computer unbearable and removal impossible (and some infestations are), you may need to seriously consider this option. In this scenario, simply slide a Windows XP or Vista CD into your ROM drive, re-boot, and go through a complete reinstallation of Windows. Don’t forget to enter your BIOS/CMOS and change your boot sequence so your CD-ROM drive boots before your hard drive. Backup your data but don't backup programs, since they are very likely infected. If you copy these files back onto your clean system, it could become infected all over again. You'll need to reinstall your favorite programs from the original disks once Windows has finished reinstalling. This is a last ditch case though and should only be considered if no other solution works for you. Of all the ways, it is the ONLY way to truly be sure your system is virus free. It's brutal but it's effective.

2. Try Free Spyware Removal Software
If you’ve simply got a few small issues and your computer still runs properly, then you can opt to clean up your hard drive with any number of programs. There are many, many free ones out there, but the ones I suggest would be Lavasoft Ad-Aware and Spybot: Search and Destroy. Both of these programs are free and can be downloaded via their respective web sites.


The most user-friendly program of the two is Ad-Aware If you're a newbie or don't really "get" computers, it's a suitable free solution. It will locate and remove just about all the malware out there. None of the solutions I tried detects every spyware out there. That's because there's so many of them, no one company can encompass them all. But this is good and it's free.
Spybot is a program for more advanced users. It's one of the best, but if you have trouble understanding and coping with PC problems, you might have difficulty figuring out how to use Spybot effectively. It's definitely not for the computer illiterate. If you have time, you can always read the readme files or the Spybot forums and gradually work your way through it. But if you're in a hurry or just not very good with computers, you probably need a faster and easier solution. 3. Paid Solutions
Everyone likes a freebie and I'm no exception. Many times freebies offer the only solution for the messed up spyware invading your system. Free solutions are usually offered by individuals or small groups (2-3 people) that have made it a personal goal to keep spyware at bay. Spybot is one of those programs.
The only thing about free solutions is that you have to ask yourself one important question. If a software program is free, how can you be sure that the people that make and update the software have all the resources they need to do the best job of cleaning and protecting your computer system against these dangerous threats?
New threats arise every day by the dozens and staying on top of them is a full time undertaking. The people that provide the free solutions are doing a fine job, but do they have enough manpower to be effective against the daily onslaught of new enemies? We all have to eat, so how do they spend their time when they're not working on spyware solutions? Will they still be there tomorrow to provide protection if they make little or no money doing it?  
Clearly, to be really effective, we need to not only clean up our current spyware mess but we also need to do our best to protect ourselves from future infection. The best people to do that in my opinion, are the people who are paid to do the job. It's the only way to be sure that adequate resources are made available to meet the massive challenge of properly updating the spyware/malware database to make sure it's able to protects us against future threats.
LavaSoft offers a good paid solution called Ad-Aware Pro and it's reasonably priced. It's a well known solution with a good reputation. It's the upgrade of their free offering and offers enhancements to improve protection of your system.

Final Note:

If you try the software mentioned above and still can't get rid of your problems, you may need the solution that I personally used to help me remove the spyware infection I mentioned earlier. Of all the software I tried to remove the problems from my system (both free and paid), this was the only one that was able to identify ALL the spyware, ad-ware and trojans on my system and remove them. Once I used it to clean my system, my problems disappeared and have not returned since. This may or may not work for you like it did for me but if you still have any doubts that all your problems have been resolved, visit this site and try the free scan. It can't hurt to get a second opinion when it comes to these nasty pests that are so difficult to detect and erase. Why take a chance that you're still open to abuse of your computer system?
My personal method of dealing with spyware these days is actually is 2 pronged. I use my primary spyware remover and then back it up with an Ad-Aware scan just to be sure they both agree that my system is clean. It's slightly more expensive but this method gives me maximum protection and peace of mind. If you've ever had a bad spyware infection, you'll understand just how important that is.
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Thursday, January 31, 2008

Is your PC very slow? It’s time to speed it up!

Do you remember when you bought your new PC? When you switched it on everything was fast and smooth. A huge improvement over the old machine.PC Getting Slow?

A year later and the machine has slowed down considerably. Starting-up has gone from a few seconds to several minutes. Shutting-down takes forever. Loading programs and saving documents has become very slow.

Why has this happened? No, it is not your imagination. There are a range of reasons.

Continued...

The first is data fragmentation. As files are added and deleted on your machine, file fragmentation takes place. Think of a brand new pack of cards. All of the hearts are together and in sequence. If you need to access the 8, 9, 10 and Ace of hearts, it is a very quick process to find them. But once the cards have been shuffled, the process becomes much longer.
The second reason is spyware. If you machine does not have anti-spyware software installed, there is a 99% probability that your computer is infested. It can happen within a few seconds of connecting an unprotected machine to the Internet.

Then there are Trojan Horses. These operate just like Trojan horses in Troy. They get inside and start working their evil. Most anti-virus and anti-spyware software does not deal effectively with these.

Other issues that could have a major impact include:

The start menu too many programs are being loaded up at start-up

Windows Registry Windows maintains a registry of programs that are added and removed. It does this badly, so that the registry often does not reflect reality.

The pre-load every time windows loads a new file or program, it adds the details into a prefetch file. This is loaded into windows every time it starts. Windows tries to find all the files. It takes longer if they are not there.

Viruses do more than just slow down your machine. They could render it unusable!

Temporary files Windows may try to load these into memory at start-up

Missing networks Windows searches for every network defined in the system at strat-up.

A variety of solutions can be tried to speed up your machine.

Before you get taken in by some of the offerings on the Web, remember that many of these are bogus. Products are advertised as free solutions. After downloading and running the software you are presented with a massive report of over 300 problems. If you then buy the free product, you will get a key that unlocks the code to fix your machine. It is unlikely to make any difference!

If you fall for these solutions you will usually be wasting your money.

A variety of programs masquerade as anti-spyware packages. After downloading, it reports that your machine has 1281 spyware threats. You have to pay to remove’ these threats. Many of these packages are Spyware or Trojan installers. Apart from trying to get you to part with your money they can cause considerable damage to your system. Before downloading investigate. A Google search will normally tell you what you need to know.

The packages mentioned below have all been tried and tested.

Run Windows defrag. Select this from the control panel and select each hard drive separately. If your drive was very fragmented this may be all that is required to speed-up your machine.

Run a Registry cleaner. Registry Mechanic works well. A 30 day evaluation version is available try it. Once the registry is clean your machine should be faster.

Advanced Windows Care is a freebie from IOBit.com. It examines your system for a variety of problems and fixes them. This may help to improve performance. IOBit also have a free defragmenter that runs on your machine and constantly monitors file fragmentation.

Download and install Windows Defender from the MSN download page. Windows defender is a free spyware remover from Microsoft. In addition use Spybot - it is good and will get rid of most spyware problems.

Trojan Remover will eliminate Trojans. I used the fully-functional evaluation version to save a machine that could not be used. The problem was solved.

Edit the start menu. Advanced Windows Care has a start menu editor included. Many programs load at start-up and remain resident in memory constantly. They can become a major drain on machine resources, and it is usually better to remove all but the essential ones. Don’t try to remove anything that you are not sure of.

Check your free disk space. Windows prefers at least 25% of the hard drive to be free space. Sounds ridiculous, but its true. Ideally, purchase an external USB Hard drive to store your videos and music and to back up your machine. The more free space on your machine, the faster it will run.

Clear the Windows prefetch file. Get detailed instructions for this from the Web. It will speed-up your start-up.

Install a good anti-virus program. Grisoft have an excellent free program called AVG free for home users. It works better than some of the premium anti-virus packages!

Uninstall any unwanted programs. All those programs that you have installed and never use should be removed. They use up space and resources.

Remove any unused network references. Go to COntrol Panel, Network connections, and remove any networks that you no longer use.

You have spent the last five hours trying to tune your machine. If it is up to speed, congratulations! You can skip the next section.

If you still have problems, then it is time to reinstall Windows! When all else fails, this is usually the best route to go. To be safe, back-up your machine first! Re-install Windows using the Operating System CD that came with the machine. On some machines the installation files may be on a separate partition of the hard drive. Reinstalling Windows will take about 90 minutes.

Once the installation is complete, you can download and install all of the updates that have been applied since the last installation (or when you bought your machine). Windows can take care of that automatically.

If your machine is still slow after all of this then buy additional memory and get a larger hard drive. Perhaps it is time for a new machine!

As a last resort (many will argue that this is a better option altogether), replace windows with Linux! I am very happy with Windows XP, but one thing lacking is efficiency. Windows inevitably begins a path of slowing down from the moment you begin. Linux is somewhat more stable and efficient. A variety of Linux options are available the most popular being Ubuntu. Remember that your Windows programs will not run on this platform! There are Linux alternatives available for most applications and most of these are free. For example, openoffice.org is a good office suite available totally free


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