[1L]

Some journalist. There's freeware that could have taken care of all of this without a reformat, and all information has been posted on various threads on FR.

To review:

1. Ignore Norton. Buggy and doesn't work very well. Download Avast Anti-Virus and that will do the job.
2. Install Firefox and make it your default browser. It will work in virtually all cases.
3. Download CleanCache and run that. It will clean up all IE temporary internet files and other things that are slowing the computer down.
4. Adaware SE and Spybot should waste just about any spyware lurking on your system.

Some of these programs have commercial licenses that cost, but can be used free for personal use. Decide accordingly. The whole process isn't that hard to correct.

[Dashing Dasher]

I also love Cookiewall.

[Clara Lou]

I can agree with everything in your post except the comment about Norton. It's worked like a charm in every way over the years I've had it.

[stylin_geek]

I went down that route with a desktop we have here at work, and finally gave up. Somebody had loaded all kinds of freeware software on it, and there was no getting rid of the spy ware.

It was far easier and less time consuming to reload. I also told the person to bad if he lost stuff he wanted. I was pretty irritated by then. A few hours later, the computer had only business related apps on it. And, it is running like a brand new machine.

Before you ask, this stuff was on my network before I started. You have no idea what a fight it was to get everything cleaned up. For God's sake, some bonehead actually allowed some users to put AOL on their desktop computers!! Of course, even though AOL has been removed, those computers are still giving me trouble. However, they're in for a complete format reload, too.

[rwfromkansas]

Is Avast that good? Maybe I should switch to that from Norton.

I do use Spybot and Adaware...they work great. I also use Firefox, and it works find 90 percent of the time for a site.

I have not tried CleanCache though....will have to do that.