|
Send this page by email
Why is my computer slowing down?
I'll bet you thought your popup blocker was protecting you from popups. Nope, it's just a bandadge covering an infection. An infection that can slow your computer to a crawl.
Popups are ads that are triggered by nasty little programs that sneak into your computer from infected websites. A popup blocker stops you from seeing the problem, but the spy-bots are still there.
Spy-bots are viruses made by advertising companies. They are the leading cause of malfunctioning computers today. If your not protected, you've probably got 50 to 100 spy-bots running on your system now, using up the resources your computer need to do what it's supposed to do. And if the spy-bots don't like each other they fight among themselves and make the whole thing worse.
Here's how you can tell if you have spy-bots:
- Do you get lots of pop-up ads when you surf the web?
- Do you need a pop-up blocker to keep them down?
- Has your machine slowed down, especially on the web?
- Do your children or teenagers use your computer to play games or download music?
- Do you see a new search bar among the toolbars at the top of your browser?
- Is there a little ladybug icon down by your clock?
If you answered yes to one or more of the above questions, you've got spybots!
Don't Panic! It's going to be OK!
There's a way to fix your computer and you can usually do it yourself.
Here are the steps:
- First you'll need to make sure you have a working virus scanning program. They usually don't kill spybots very well, but they are excellent at squashing viruses. Some viruses open up your computer to spy-bots and help them get in. Mcafee and Norton make the best and easiest to understand virus protection. You'll find links to get these programs on my Resources and Links page.
If your existing virus scanner isn't working or is out of date, you've probably got viruses and that's the subject for a whole other article.
- Assuming your virus scanner is working and up-to-date, you'll want to scann for spy-bots. There are a lot of anti-spy-bot programs out there. Some of them are even offered in popup ads. Never buy anything from a popup ad! Most of these are fakes and only make the problem worse. The best spypot scanner I've found is a free one, and you can download it from it's own website: www.spybot.com . It's called SpyBot Search and destroy. It's a little tricky to find it on their site but it's worth the search.
- SpyBot Search and Distroy will remove most spy-bots, but there are some that are too tough for any but a specialized remover. The CW (Cool Web Search) is one of those. To get rid of that one you'll need CW Shredder, available from Trend Micro at http://www.intermute.com/spysubtract/cwshredder_download.html . It's free and easy to run ans it's the only way to remove some of these critters.
- If you manage to remove the spybots, but they come back again after you reboot. One or more of the critters has probably wormed it's way onto your computer's auto repair system, so when you reboot your computer, windows unknowingly repairs them. If you think this might be your problem, you'll need to turn off System Restore to clear it. This will erase all the restore data, but it's the only way. To turn off System Restore, Right click on My Computer and choose Properties. Click the System Restore tab and Check "Turn off System Restore on all drives". Next Re-scan your computer for viruses and spy-bots. If it works, you can go back and turn the System Restore back on.
The steps outlined above usually work, but if that doesn't fix it, you'll probably need an expert and they'll probably want to re-load all the software on your computer, a very time consuming and expensive task.
By:
Sarah Williams
Just The Basics / Web-2-3
|
