Anti-Spyware Programs Clean but Don't Disinfect

The Houston Chronicle ^ | October 31, 2004 | Matthew Fordahl [Associated Press]

[quidnunc]

Salinas, Calif. — Though less than a year old, the PC took more than åfive minutes to start up and never shut down without stalling on error messages. Attempts to Web surf generated at least a half-dozen pop-up ads and — frequently — system freezes.

Internet Explorer's home page was hijacked. Attempts to reach some sites, including eBay — were redirected to random search engines that only called up more ads. Google search results were altered. And the modem, without permission, tried to dial distant lands in search of porn.

Welcome to the nasty world of a PC infected with adware, spyware, dialers and their ilk, all of it installed without the knowledge of its owner — my brother-in-law.

No sooner had he spent nearly $1,000 for the Dell Dimension 4600C than he lost control of it to advertisers and porn peddlers.

My brother-in-law, bless him, had committed the computing equivalent of running with sharp objects: Installing free software willy-nilly, clicking carelessly on misleading ads or spam and letting relatives (not this one) have free reign during visits.

But my job was not to judge. It was, rather, to make the violated system hum again. I agreed have a go at degunking it provided I could write about the experience. He agreed.

-snip-

[GummyIII]

You might want to add making a backup of the registry before doing the regedit.

Another thing is to run msconfig to see what is loading on startup. Often a virus/trojan/adware will add things there.

[white trash redneck]

5) Run the program "regedit" and delete any values from the Run key that look suspicious.

And how would us non-professionals know which registry keys are suspicious?

[silent_jonny]

I don't know what to tell you. Spyware can be anywhere. If you've installed some new hardware, like a keyboard or a printer or something then Spyware can sneak into your computer that way. It's not exactly illegal, but I think it's unethical. (Logitech is guilty of this practice)

[Not now, Not ever!]

Bump, Bttt, as a bookmark

[sigarms]

I forgot to add a couple more critical steps:

10) Search for and file the file named "hosts". Open the file with notepad. Remove any entries other than the "localhost" one. Save the file and overwrite the original.

11) Open up Internet Properties (in the Control Panel). Go to each tab and click the "Restore Defaults" button.

[John Lenin]

Anybody have an opinion as to the best ad ware spy ware program. I use Ad Ware and Webroot and can't get the job done.

My opinion is to download Mandrake Linux 10.1, I have been using it for about 4 days and it's the first Linux release I would recommend. It's awesome and it's Free !

[Mustng959]

ping to self. good info!

[Lancey Howard]

I have been delighted with my Spy Sweeper.

[happydogdesign]

Dealing with Spyware and Adware

[Peace Is Coming]

bttt

[dolander2002]

I use Crazy Browser and never have pop-up windows.

[abner]

Just finished the Norton scan... 4 viruses. Gone now.

No new hardware. It's all Sony. New water cooled machine. It's pretty cool. I'm just going to keep running adaware and Norton and hoping for the best.
The amazing thing is, my satellite connection is working perfectly again! Before, it would cut out about 4 times a day.

[Tax Government]

AdAware and SpyBot Search and Destroy are a good combination.

Something else that may increase speed greatly on XP is disabling the System Restore function. I suggest this only to people who are comfortable with their machine, and who will take responsibility for not being able to restore the system to some prior state. (I have never, ever used this feature, and feel very comfortable ditching it entirely.)

Why is System Restore a problem? It creates a (possibly VERY large) undefraggable file. To turn the feature off go to Programs / Control Panel / System / System Restore.

You may just want to turn System Restore off from time to time and defrag a couple times, then turn it back on.

[Reagan is King]

I've tried them all (seems like!) and I recently had one that nothing else would get rid of until I d/l Trojan Hunter. It found a trojan that had "injected" itself into the file explorer.exe! This new type of sneaky trojan makes itself part of programs that are always running on your system so it's always running too. Their website says this is the only one that fixes these types so if you have a tough one you might want to d/l their free trial and see if it finds anything.

Trojan Hunter

Is it just me or does anybody else want to just beat the living daylights out the people that make these things? lol.

[Mustng959]

I have Spybot, Norton Antivirus and a Windows XP firewall and my system runs pretty good without any pop-ups. Looks like some good preventive maintenance was given.
Thanks for your added recommendations, also.

[philetus]

Spybot
Spyware Blaster
Spyware Guard
The last two from Javacool software.
All are free and good.
Run all three and you won't get spyware.

[philetus]

A POPUP?
Stop using IE!

Find out why people everywhere are switching to Firefox. Be sure not to miss the great Introduction to Firefox.

http://texturizer.net/firefox/

[John Lenin]

You will never be safe with Windows. XPSP2 is trash, I had to re-install the OS twice in one month because XP slowed down to a crawl both times after about 10 days use. My sytem was being hacked into 2 days after a fresh install with a hardware firewall and software firewall. I was going to switch to MAC but downloaded Mandrake Linux and for the first time got a Linux install where everything works without having to be a linux guru. Windows is unsafe at any speed.

[edchambers]

I use Google toolbar for popups,Spybot search and destroy resident,you have to turn on the "advanced mode" for this.Then run Adaware every couple of days or once a week, my system stays reasonably clean.You can set up Adaware to run at startup if you have the time/patience.Also using a good registry cleaner will help I recomend TweakNow RegCleaner it might keep some of this stuff from comming back it'll definitely keep a bunch of junk registry entries from slowing down your system.It's an ongoing battle but it's manageable if you stay on top of it.Somebody will chime in any second now with buy a Mac or install Linux but it's only a matter of time before spyware/malware begins to target these OSs as well.

[El Gran Salseron]

"5) Run the program "regedit" and delete any values from the Run key that look suspicious."

There are two pertinent Run folders in the registry and are located as follows:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENT_VERSION\RUN

and

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE_\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENT_VERSION\RUN

I'm sure that sigarms meant to tell all of you this but forgot. :-)