Ack! Spyware!

[cgannon64]

I recently downloaded a program to delete spyware on my computer. I was tipped off to the presence of this spyware when I got popup ads while playing games, even if I wasn't online, and when my computer was going abnormally slow. The program scanned my computer, and found about 7 programs. (One of them even said, in the ReadMe: "The goal of this program is to gather information about you, the user of this computer, such as your email, favorite sites and hobbies, etc. and send this information back to our head computer to put you on mailing lists and personalize your spam." ) I clicked Delete, and it deleted about 4 from my computer. A message popped up saying, "These programs cannot be deleted because they are in use."

Help! I'm still getting these annoying pop-up ads, when I'm not online!

CG

 

[munzy76]

What program did you download?
1)You can try disabling the programs that are running by killing them in the task manager under processes. Then you might be able to uninstall them.
2) You can also try running msconfig. Click Start, Run, type in msconfig and then press enter. Click on the Startup tab and uncheck anything that you believe may be spyware.
3) You can try searching the registry for entries. Click start, run. then type regedit and then press enter. Press Control+F then type in what you want to search for (search for the name of the spyware the spyware remover software found).

If you didn't try Ad-Aware download it here -> www.lavasoft.de <- I like this software the best for removing spyware.
If none of these steps helps you then I am stumped.

 

[Lucky]

If you are not too familiar with editing your registry and/or changing your system properties, definitely download Ad-Aware from LavaSoft. This little program does all the work for you and is frequently updated, so it´s more likely that you miss a spyware than the program does.

And it´s easy enough to use.

 

[Pillager]

Yup, I'd concur. Try AdAware - it's very simple and effective.

 

[cgannon64]

I have Ad-Aware, but it won't delete programs that are running, and since spyware programs run all the time, we have a problem.

CG

 

[munzy76]

Did you try the steps I listed?

 

[cgannon64]

Originally posted by munzy
Did you try the steps I listed?

I did Ad-Aware again, and I haven't gotten a pop-up ad for a while, the stream of spam into my inbox has stopped, and my computer is faster again. I think Ad-Aware did its job.

CG

 

[gonzo_for_civ]

Ad-Aware kills everything for me

Make SURE you go to msconfig though like munzy said and uncheck everything you think might be spyware so it won't run on startup. Then restart. Then Ad-Aware and delete them.

 

[sabo]

Or you could just do this.
when you see the prompt "loading windows"
hit F8 go into the command prompt and delete them from DOS

 

[Zwelgje]

I also have this little program called RamHak (I guess its similar to msconfig) which I downloaded from some obscure site (lots of hacker talks there ). It lists all the programs running and you can then select to kill those.
I also had this spyware program running which I couldn't delete with ad-aware so I first killed it with ramhak and then deleted it.

 

[anarchywrksbest]

Like Wintop? I have that