I have a reputation for being an all around geek, especially with my family and friends. So given the opportunity 😉 to help those in need of assistance I generally turn down any kind of monetary reimbursement. Instead I just pile the whole family over to their house and they usually end up feeding us. We have a great time talking, I fix their computer woes, the kids play and all is well. Usually.
During this one instance, however the poor victim (the computer) was not so fortunate. It was so extremely bad that I could not at first tell what the problem was. The thing just wouldn’t boot up. I soon discovered that it was because the system resources were being consumed on startup by an enormous amount of spyware applications that had accumulated on the system. I ended up taking the system home with me. After many, many… many reboots and system cleans with several different tools the poor thing was rendered useless. The Windows operating system was completely corrupted and damaged beyond repair and the only thing I could do was salvage what data I could from the hard drive and then perform a clean install for them.
Please, please… please folks. Don’t let this happen to you. It is actually quite simple. There are some very excellent tools available that you can basically install and forget about that take care of this. One of the better commercial products out there is called Spy Sweeper. What!? Pay for software? Yeah, I know. Believe me, though you do not want your identity to be flaunted all over the internet by rampant spyware applications. This is one area I would suggest investing a few greenbacks in. Spy Sweeper stands out, in my humble opinion as one of the leaders in this area of software. Plus they’re Windows Vista compatible! That in and of itself should get a reward, shouldn’t it? This software really is great though. It offers continuous protection with all the latest updates. It is really good at removing those stubborn hard to get out spyware apps and they have FREE customer support.
Of course there is always the alternative… you could just invite me and my family over and feed us while I fix your computer. If it’s too bad though, I may have to charge you since you’ve been warned. 🙂