Avoiding System Slowdowns

 

Everyday millions of computers are infected with spyware. Innocent people are bombarded with pop-ups, pop-unders, fancy animated ads, talking ads, and even annoying ads that won't let you view the webpage you really want to. We hear stories all the time of how frustration began when user A visited Website B, which in turn gave them Trojan C, which in turn invited(secretly installed) it's friends malware XYZ.

Users get so frustrated trying to combat spyware, that some of them actually go out and buy whole new computers according to this article in the New York Times.
Don't be so rash, it's not the end of the world, there is help! We can fix your computer to a better then new out of the box state, heck you can do it yourself if you want! All you have to do is follow these simple steps.

1. Protect Your PC: Make sure good anti-virus, anti-spyware, and personal firewall are installed, updated, and functioning properly. Some Viruses can disable these programs, so keep a eye out for strange behaviour

2. Watch What you Click on: Be very careful when closing pop-up ads, sometimes the executable can actually be in the ok and cancel buttons, close them with the X or better yet, use Alt-F4 to close the window.

3. Only run the programs you need: Alot of software wants to install all kinds of components that you don't need. Now these aren't all spyware or adware, but hey, if you don't need the program loaded then why bother. You can take unwanted entries out of your start-up easily, see this article for tips on how to do that.

4. Clean up your system: Delete your temporary files and internet files regularly. Alot of times viruses and spyware will reload after you remove them because the original file is cached in your temp files. I really recommend a program called CCleaner to help you with that. CCleaner can be found here www.ccleaner.com