Spyware can be difficult to remove, mostly due to the fact that they
don't want to be. You'll almost never be able to go to your 'Add/Remove
Programs' and simply click 'Uninstall the big nasty virus'. We all know
why, they want their ad program to blast you with ads so they make
money.
So what can we do? Lets try a few steps.
Clean out your startup programs
Lets click Start then Run then type msconfig and hit Enter. Now we are in the System Configuration Utility. Click on the Startup Tab and lets see what we have in there. This tab lists all the programs that start when your computer starts. What do you really need here? Well you'll need your anti-virus software and really ... that's probably it. You will see a ton of junk in there from Real Player to Quicktime to Adobe Updater, uncheck all that junk. If you want to update your programs you can do it when YOU want, not have them constantly monitor and tell you when. You will also probably see your printer stuff in there, its probably safe to remove that as well too. If it causes any issues you can always put that check back. Now what you REALLY want to see is a random letter combination. That your virus. Uncheck and some of them are actually that simple to remove. So after you uncheck all of them hit Apply then restart. Did any of them come back? If so you will need to remove them. I'll go over that in our next post :)
So what can we do? Lets try a few steps.
Clean out your startup programs
Lets click Start then Run then type msconfig and hit Enter. Now we are in the System Configuration Utility. Click on the Startup Tab and lets see what we have in there. This tab lists all the programs that start when your computer starts. What do you really need here? Well you'll need your anti-virus software and really ... that's probably it. You will see a ton of junk in there from Real Player to Quicktime to Adobe Updater, uncheck all that junk. If you want to update your programs you can do it when YOU want, not have them constantly monitor and tell you when. You will also probably see your printer stuff in there, its probably safe to remove that as well too. If it causes any issues you can always put that check back. Now what you REALLY want to see is a random letter combination. That your virus. Uncheck and some of them are actually that simple to remove. So after you uncheck all of them hit Apply then restart. Did any of them come back? If so you will need to remove them. I'll go over that in our next post :)
Email to a friend
Share on Facebook
Stumble It
