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Spyware and Virus Removal
This guide explains how you can clean up your system, remove viruses and
spyware, and make it run a bit more like new. It assumes that you are
able to boot into your system and run programs well enough to download
some tools and run them. Users who can't even boot or whose system is
bogged down to the point of unusability will have to wait for a future
guide.
We'll start by cleaning off the system. If you've installed Norton,
MacAffee, SpySweeper or any other maintenance tool that you paid for,
uninstall it and never pay for it again. With the exception of disk
defragmenters, these tools don't work properly, slow down your system,
suck up resources, annoy you, and are a major cash drain. Free alternatives
exist, most of which are more effective, efficient, and friendly.
Once you've gotten rid of your antivirus software, your system is at
major risk. We'll fix that in a moment, but for now unplug your modem.
You won't need it for a while, as we're merely cleaning stuff up.
Start by going into Add/Remove Programs. Do this via the control panel
(Start->Run->"control"). Read through the list. Uninstall anything that
you never use, anything that duplicates functionality from other programs,
anything with no major configuration (we'll reinstall these later, once
the system is back in shape), and games that you have no intention of
playing for a while. Once you've done all that, reboot your machine again
and then run a disk defragmenter. This isn't really necessary at this
point, but it buys you time to let your network-dependant spyware die in
the absense of a modem.
Once you've done all that, shut down the machine, plug in your modem, allow
it to initialize, and turn the machine back on. As soon as you're up, install
AVG
Free Edition. This will protect your system from viruses more effectively
than Norton, but without the cost or performance hit. You can run a full scan
if you want, but it will take a long time to finish and you may wish
to just run it overnight.
Once AVG is setup, download and install Spybot Search and Destroy
here. The download site can be difficult to use, but any of the download
buttons should work. Once you've got it, run it. Follow the steps to update
it, run a full system scan, and then immunize your machine. This will
probably clear up a lot of your system's problems. There are other features
of the Spybot program, but they are out of the scope of this tutorial. The
best way to find them is to experiment.
As a supplement to Spybot, you should also download and install
SpywareBlaster
. Once again, update and immunize. This program won't find spyware
on your machine, but it will help prevent spyware from getting there in
the first place. There is no noticable performace hit caused by this.
Hopefully by now you have cleared off most of the viruses and other garbage
from your machine. If you haven't already run AVG, you should do so now. It
will finish in under 24 hours, depending on how many files you have, how
fast your system is, and how badly virused it is.
At this point you will probably be interested in my tutorial on
optimizing your system. If the above steps
didn't help you at all, you will probably wish to call a technician. Or, if
you enjoy taking risks and experimenting, try my tutorial on
system recovery.
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