With all the malware out there these days we should all be checking our systems for this stuff. But how and what tools should I use?
If you system is running slow, maybe opening web pages really slow or maybe giving you a lot of popus for no particular reason then you may have gotten a lot of spyware or adware. First ... what is spyware/adware?
What is this spyware stuff anyway?
Spyware/adware/malware are terms that are used interchangeably these days. The short version is that these types of programs take a portion of control from you, the user, of your computer and give them to a third party. This can include watching your surfing habits or logging keystrokes to get bank account information or forcing you to visit particular sites on the internet.
How do I check for this stuff?
I suggest using at least 2 different scanners for spyware removal. I use Spybot Search&Destroy from Safer Networking and Ad-Aware from LavaSoft and HighJackThis.
In this article I will discuss only Spybot and Ad-Aware. HighJackThis is a little more indepth and I would suggest using it only if you are sure you know what your doing (I will be writing an entire article on how to use HJT). Anything that is detected by Spybot or Ad-Aware can be safely removed, but HighJackThis shows all running services and programs. Deleting the wrong thing will keep you system from functioning properly.
Both Spybot and Ad-Aware are free to download and use, for personal use that is. After downloading them make sure you update them. At work I'm behind a firewall and can't get the downloads the easy way. If you run into this problem you can download the updates separately. For Spybot you are looking for a file called spybot_includes.exe. save this to your desktop and run it, it will automatically update Spybot. Ad-Aware isn't quite as easy, you will need to download a file called def.ref to your computer and save it to c:\Program Files\Lavasoft\Ad-Aware SE Personal.
Now to the tutorials
Once you've downloaded them its time to make sure they are updated and then run them. Ive written a tutorial for Spybot and Ad-Aware with screenshots included.
Don't forget Windows Updates
Once you have run these two programs I would suggest running Windows Updates to make sure you have all the latest patches.
