Spyware

For the 3 people who don’t know anything about spyware – these are programs that hide in your computer and monitor everything you do or type. And then they send all that information to the company behind the spyware. Don’t be surprised next time your credit card is charged by a shop in Romania even though you live in London.

How do you get spyware? You might have visited a naughty web site, or downloaded a program that had spyware inside it, or opened an infected e-mail attachment. Either way, here it is, hiding in your computer, spying on you and consuming CPU and Internet traffic you pay for. Some spyware can really slow down your PC.

Getting rid of spyware can be as easy as running a spyware scan, or it can be a real challenge and you will spend days reading computer forums and might end up re-installing Windows.
UPGRADE Memory

If your computer has too little memory, then all the tweaks or disk and registry defragmentation won’t have a significant effect on the performance of your PC.

At the time of writing, 512 MB RAM is barely enough to run Windows Vista. Of course, modern software wants to take advantage of the modern computers and underpowered computers simply won’t cut it anymore.

Therefore, if no amount of tweaking helped improve your PC, simply upgrade memory to at least 2GB. Your computer will thank you.
CLEAN UP Startup Programs

Do you have an antivirus, antispyware, firewall and a bunch of other programs running at the same time? Here’s an advice. Disable Windows Defender. Install just one good antivirus / antispyware. Windows Firewall is enough for most of us, so don't buy another Firewall.

Remove that “Acrobat Quick Launch” from your startup programs. Yes, it allows you to launch Acrobat faster. But it slows down everything else! If you have iPod, make sure Real Player or iTunes do not run on startup. How do you do that? You can use Startup Manager from BoostSpeed, or msconfig from Microsoft if you are technical enough.
MAINTAIN Disk and Registry

Most people know that they need to clean up and defragment disks and the Registry in order to speed up their computer. But I learnt that not many of them know that the order in which you do it is important.

   1. Start with cleaning the disks. Remove all the junk files you don’t need. Boost Speed or any other disk cleaner will be able to help.
   2. Clean the Registry. Just like the disks, the Registry accumulates hundreds or even thousands of junk registry keys.
   3. After you clean the Registry, the keys are not physically removed, still slowing down your PC. Defragment the Registry to completely remove the junk keys.
   4. Finally, defragment the disk. Defragmentation puts fragments of each file together so that each file can be read instantaneously in one go.

DISABLE Services

Services are programs that run whenever you power on your PC. That means they are always loaded in memory, taking space and CPU time. Microsoft did their best and your PC runs services to print documents, to browse Internet, to run Windows Messenger or to allow remote connections to your PC.

But more likely than not, you just don’t need all of them! To really speed up your PC you need to disable many of the services. Here’s the list of the services you are pretty safe to disable. Note that you can always turn them back on.

    * Application Management: Set it to manual.
    * Cryptographic Services: Most likely you don’t need it; set it to manual.
    * Distributed Transaction Service: Set it to manual.
    * Error Reporting Service: Remember annoying “Send the Error Report to Microsoft” pop ups? Disable this service and you won’t see them again. You will also save your bandwidth.
    * Fast User Switching Compatibility: Are you the only one using this computer? If yes, then you can safely disable it.
    * FTP Publishing:Set it to manual.
    * HTTP SSL: Set it to manual.
    * Indexing Service: This is a very costly service for your PC. Disable it if you do not use Windows Search extensively.
    * IPSEC Services: Set this service to manual.
    * Windows Messenger: this service is useless for most users. It is security threat to your computer and a resource hog. Disable it.
    * MS Software Shadow Copy Provider: Disable or set this service to manual.
    * NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing: Most likely you are not using Remote Desktop feature; disable this service.
    * Remote Desktop Help Session Manager: If you do not call Microsoft support often; disable this service.
    * Remote Procedure Call Locator: You don’t need this service, set it to manual.
    * Remote Registry: This is a security threat to your PC, disable it immediately.
    * Secondary Logon: Set it to manual.
    * Terminal Services: Set it to manual or disable it.
    * Wireless Zero Configuration: You can safely disable it if you don’t have wireless network.
    * WMI Performance Adapters: Only experienced users need to keep this service running.

Apart from these top 5 solutions, there are of course other things you can do to speed up your computer. Look at disabling extra visual effects, enabling DMA for disks, optimizing your Internet browsers, turning off NTFS indexing and other tweaks. All of these can save you a couple of thousand dollars spent on a new computer.

Today I am going to be talking about different ways you can make a computer run faster. There is actually a lot you can do yourself that will boost your PC's performance. So lets take a look at different ways we can remedy that slow computer of yours!

1. Free Up Disk Space

A great way to make a computer run faster is to free up some disk space. Windows comes with a disk cleanup tool that helps you free up space on your hard disk. The utility identifies files that you can safely delete without messing anything up, and then enables you to choose whether you want to delete some or all of the identified files.

How to use disk cleanup tool.

* Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click Disk Cleanup. If several drives are available, you might be prompted to specify which drive you want to clean.

* In the Disk Cleanup for dialog box, scroll through the content of the Files to delete list. (If you have multiple hard drives you will have to select which one to scan.)

* Clear the check boxes for files that you don't want to delete, and then click OK.

* When prompted to confirm that you want to delete the specified files, click OK.

2. Use Defrag Tool

When you add a file or a new program to a new computer, the hard drive is relatively empty so new data is saved to the hard drive in one whole block. When you need to use that information, the computer can quickly access it because it is all in one place. Defragging your system is definitely a way to make a computer run faster.

How to use defrag tool.

* From the start menu point to "all programs"
* Point to "Accessories"
* Point to "System Tools"
* Click on "Disk Defragmenter"
* The disk defragmenter will display the hard drives on your computer. Just select and click Defragment.

3. Get rid of spyware

It was amazing! I was more than enthralled by this story. I actually had my mouth open, with no words coming out. Appearing on yahoo.com on Sunday, November 8, 2009, was the story of a couple who had a very vicious experience with computer viruses and spyware. In fact this guy needed more than a spyware fix. He needed an attorney, and over $250,000 to pay his legal fees. On top of this, he lost his job.

In summary, the story was about a man who worked in law enforcement in the USA, who lost his job when he was accused of downloading illegal adult materials on his office-supplied laptop. It turned out that his computer was seriously infected with viruses, and hackers were using his computer to store and distribute illegal children-centric adult material. Having lost his job, and threatened with a 5-year jail term, he was finally able to prove his innocence when his computer (by itself) was surfing the net for one and a half hours while he was out having dinner with his wife!

Now, this is an amazing story, but the moral of it has deep implications for you. Can you imagine being hauled off to jail because someone, somewhere in cyberspace, has managed to infect your computer with a virus, and is watching illegal material on your computer? If nothing else, I am going to assume that after you have read this story, you will take the threat of spyware and virus infections very seriously. If you have not given this much thought lately, you need to protect yourself now.

A spyware is program that may be downloaded onto your computer via the Internet and is used to track your online behaviors. Others are intended to be destructive and annoying, and as in the example above, can get you into real trouble. No matter what the intention is, your most viable option for keeping up with virus and spyware threats, is to consistently complete a spyware fix process on a sustained basis.

No matter how safe you may think you are online, it does not take long before our computer can be infected with spyware or viruses that can facilitate identity theft, disable your computer, and even redirected your browser to websites you did not request. To keep yourself out of harms way, you should re-visit your computer virus protection plan immediately. If you have not done one lately, a spyware fix, or virus cleaning is in order.

When you are infected with malicious spyware your computer starts acting like an unwilling child. It will perform very poorly. It will give you strange activity and pop-ups keep appearing on your screen. Of course you come to the internet for your solution and you want to remove this spyware and get your computer running smoothly again. What are some things to think about when choosing the best spyware for your PC? This article will touch on a few ideas that might help you decide.

Most spyware programs out there on the market today that are of any significant value will be a paid software. The free spyware removers out there have yet to reach a point where they are good enough to challenge the paid spyware removers. Usually the free spyware removers are even spyware themselves, acting as a spyware remover to infect your computer without your knowledge. It's better to go with a reputable spyware program that has had a proven track record for performing well and has regular updates to keep you protected.

The best spyware software are easy to use and have good support. The ones that are extremely easy to use will simply have a scan now button and do it's magic. Then when it finds infections you just selcect the infection and click delete. That would delete the spyware.

Some have even more protection than just scanning your computer, such as "active protection" which means that it will scan new files that are created on your computer and then remove those before they can do any harm. This is a great feature you definitely want in a spyware program.

Spyware is a modern scourge that's easily among the top 5 computer security concerns. Some forms that actually spy on you live up to the name "spyware", while others can infect almost like viruses; hijacking your browser and causing havoc on your computer.

Spyware is here to stay, which means you must regularly scan for spyware in addition to vigilance and taking normal internet safety precautions.

There are three important steps to avoiding spyware:

1. Install and Run an Anti-Spyware Program - The choices are endless, but popular anti-spyware tools which just happen to be free include Windows Defender, which may already be installed on your newer versions of Windows; Spybot Search and Destroy, which is a common and highly regarded recommendation, and Lavasoft's Adaware, which is free for personal home use. Download one of these programs and install it as soon as possible.

2. Update the Spyware Database - After downloading anti-spyware software, you should start by updating the database of spyware definitions that come with the installation. New spyware is created daily and your programs need to have the most current updates to remain effective. Most programs have update functions that will locate and install the latest databases automatically; make sure that this feature is enabled.

3. Run Regular Scans - Many anti-spyware programs will work automatically, which means once installed it goes to work checking your computer and will perform a complete scan daily. However, for those programs that don't have a regular scan as the default, you need to make sure to go in and set up a daily scan schedule so that the anti-spyware tool you've selected scans regularly.

Additional Notes

Many anti-spyware packages have advanced protection that can prevent spyware from installing. These programs may lock your browser home page so that you must approve any change, or simply not allow it to be changed. Some packages may also lock the "hosts" file - a common spyware target. These protections are valuable and should be turned on.

Do you really need to download adware and spyware remover programs? Many computer users try to convince themselves that they will be careful enough not to let such malicious software infect their systems. They then slowly discover that their system starts to run slower and slower, and by that time, the virus or malware would have already infected their PC.

1. What Are the Signs that You Need to Download Adware and Spyware Remover Programs?

It usually starts with the problem of slow processing, before turning into bigger problems like pop up advertisements and spam mails sent to the user as well as his or her contacts. Spyware and adware starts slowing down the PC processing by taking up more memory RAM that the system would otherwise require for processing its normal processes.

The Definition of Spyware

Spyware has been proved to be a major type of malicious software by its millions of victims that it can secretly and automatically installed itself on computers and perform certain behaviors such as constantly displaying unwanted advertisements, collecting confidential or sensitive information about users on purpose to transmit it to a third party or modifying the configuration of your computer without the user's knowledge or consent. Spyware does not directly spread in the manner of a computer virus or worm. It intends to install itself on a user's PC with the title of a " system performance accelerator", a helpful software agent or a trade-off for a piece of "free" software, secretly gathering marketing data and distributing targeted advertising with a clear objective for illicit commercial gains. With the emergence of a sudden increase of online transactions and the widespread ease with which these threats can be spread, adware and spyware have become major threats in cyberspace. Or in some cases, spyware comes with a bundle of other software. You system may not be harm by the vital software, but the bundled spyware.

Signs of Spyware

System setting and software setting are controlled by a string of great power.

The default home page of your Web browser has been changed and you have been taken to a strange website you have been to. In addition, your PC's system setting and some software's setting have been changed without appropriately obtaining your consent and you find out that you could not control your system setting.

I am deeply annoyed by the pop-up advertisements

Since you have downloaded "free" songs from a website you have never visited before, the mysterious pop-up advertisements come as bombard when you are surfing on the Internet. Unfortunately, you haven't found any solutions to tackle the problem.

Additional components are found in your web browser but you are sure that you have never downloaded them

Spyware and other unwanted software intend to add additional toolbars to your web browser without your consent on purpose to track your Internet activities and collect your private data for illegal profits. Even if you know how to remove these toolbars, they may return each time you restart your computer.

For this article, I thought I would go ahead and give you five signs that your computer may have some type of spyware infection.

These days, spyware is everywhere. As Anti-Spyware programs get stronger, spyware continues to become trickier. Because of this, in my opinion, you simply cannot rely on running a spyware scanner to tell you if you have a spyware infection or not. You need to be able to notice other signs that you may have a spyware infection. Because let's face it, unless you have some type of spyware guard that runs 24/7, it's possible you will get an infection between scans with whichever spyware scanner you use. And if you go weeks between scans, the spyware could really harm your computer.

Now, just because you may notice one of these signs doesn't mean for sure that your computer has a spyware infection. It is still possible it doesn't. However, in my opinion, noticing any of these signs is enough reason to run a scan as soon as possible. Anyway, let's get right to the signs. Here they are, in no particular order.

1. IExplore.Exe

Try looking at the list of running processes on your computer. (Ctrl+Alt+Del - Processes (On Windows Xp) ). Do you see IExplore.Exe running? Well, if you are viewing this article in Internet Explorer or have Internet Explorer open in the background, then you shouldn't worry about seeing IEXplore.EXE in your process list. However, if you close out of Internet Explorer or you restart the computer and IEXplore.Exe or IEXplorer.exe is running when you clearly don't have Internet Explorer running, then this is a sign that you may be infected with Spyware. Many types of Spyware and Virus will run as IExplore.exe in the process list to confuse you with Internet Explorer. I have seen this happen many times when fixing computers.

2. Unexplainable Pop-Ups?

Pop-Ups can still be a problem for some internet users who don't use pop-up blockers. It can be common to go to websites and experience many pop-ups. However, if you are getting pop-up windows at times that you don't think you should be any, that may be a sign of an infection. This could be when you aren't surfing the web, when you first turn on the computer, etc. If you are experiencing this, run a scan!