Free ways to get rid of junk
by Hey I figured some people may not be aware that there are some free things online that can help their PC's. If you go to Grisoft.com, there is a very affective antivirus program that is free. Also programs available on download.com such as CWshredder, Spybot, and Ad-Aware.
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www.freecycle.org - its' a good way to get rid of junk. give it away for freeeeeee
summer recently discovered this for me =)
hmm thats helpful. Maybe I will give it a whirl later on :)
man i had so much crap on my computer! hijackthis, cwshredder, ad-aware, and spybot programs all helped out a lot. my computer runs quite faster now. google helped too when i looked up information about suspicious files or programs. i read good forums explaining wat to do to get rid of the bad stuff.
I've never had a need to install any of that stuff. ActiveX controls/programs are the root of all evil in internet explorer. They're a great idea, but just purely used for evil. (I was always impressed with msnbc.com's pull out menu with ActiveX)
I see it happen all the time. Someone is so impatient to download to get a movie/song/anime/game that they will click through a series of installation prompts without even knowing what they have just done, they're too worried about downloading or seeing whatever it is they want to see.
Use mozilla firebird or mozilla products folks, stop running this rat race. Or to help your IE, disable ActiveX and only enable for sites you know are good that use it.
Then again, programs like Kazaa are no help either. If it's free then you're probably going to always have this problem.
you'd be surprised tho. i bet ad-aware would find at least 1 or two registry keys or programs running. that stuff is tricky man. especially if somebody else has ever used your computer.
You're exactly right...thats the only reason i have ad-aware, is because other people use my computer I check it.
yeah right now i am trying to fight this thing called Difica AKA Difuca and it is not too serious but its a pain to get rid of.
you can use kazaa lite.
Aviator, you should write this up nicely and post it on the homepage as a news story. This is important stuff.
yeah, non-geeks probably need this more than anyone. man I've seen some really screwed up computers due to spyware/adware. almost unusable.
Yeah. Over the weekend, I worked on a friend's computer. He had already paid somebody to come and fix it, but they obviously did nothing to help at all.
He had about 15 viruses and trojans on there, all downloading spyware.
Ad-aware found 850 items to remove. After restarting, it found another 150.
Then I had to research another 15 or so processes and remove them all in safe mode.
It was ridiculous. His computer is actually usable now. And I know that there's so many other people out there with computers that are just as bad as his was. So sad :(
were a lot of those items cookies? ad-aware seems to dislike cookies. also i notice there's no way of selecting all the things you want to delete at once.
Uh..left click select all?
yeah, i wish. doesn't work that way. you must click all the little boxes. (BOXEN!)
It works for me whenever I use it.
ok, i just used it. obviously i was doing it wrong in the past. argh. you're very wise, TDG. check your ez messages for the info you needed
LOL. Dan that is too funny. You actually went through and clicked each one individually? lol That must have been a real pain and rather annoying.
don't feel so bad, I do that too. won't anymore though.
What is this? Geeks gone bad day?
Don't feel bad Dan, the first time I used it I went through and clicked everything too. I accidentaly found the check all option.
I'll admit, I accidentally found the option to check-all as well. Many a time did I manually check every one. haha
hahaha man everyone does it, i've done it, my boss does it everytime (i dont even tell him i just like watching him struggle with his 800 checkboxes)
and yeah, terrible UI design, whats the deal.
Naturally you would think they would check all automatically, but I guess it's too much of a risk in trashing a registry.
Well, sometimes it does check them automatically. I think like the very first time you run it.
It used to do it automatically. There's still an option in the "Cleaning Engine" Tweak settings called "Automatically mark all objects in result list", but it's disabled. I think you have to pay for it to get that option.
Okay...I got it on the first try. I don't know what's wrong with you guys.
You probably missed the box when clicking by mistake. :P
there were definitely a few hundred cookies, but there were at least 500 dlls, exes, and registry keys.
and yeah, dude, RIGHT-CLICK, Select All! haha
ugh, my parents computer was terrible, I just had them reinstall (got too tired of fetching processes)
format
insert debian linux
im almost at that point for my parents computer
for now its strict watch with VNC >:\
Some links would be nice ;)
Grisoft's AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition - this is key. Free auto-updates too
http://www.grisoft.com/us/us_dwnl_free.php
Lavasoft's Ad-Aware - run it every so often, and always be sure to update it manually.
http://www.download.com/3000-2144-10045910.html?part=69274&subj=dlpage&tag=button
CWShredder - removes only a few trojans that give you tons of ads, but does a better job of fully removing them than ad-aware.
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html
Spybot-Search & Destroy - Similar to Ad-Aware. You should run both.
http://download.com.com/3000-8022-10122137.html
yeah, uhm, what does the first one do? i want an anti-virus program that is low on the RAM hogging.
it's antivirus. no idea on the ram usage. but, seriously, you have at least 512mb of ram right?
yes. i do. my computers always seem slower with anti virus running. if i told you that i don't run anti virus on any of my computers, you'd probably be horrified. well, i don't. once a year or so i install em for a couple days, just so you sleep better. lol.
That free anti-virus is great!! You will all probably have a heart-attack BUT I've been without an updated anti-virus for quite some time. I've had ad-aware..but I just started running the anti-virus and at 18.75 GB scanned (I dont know how many I have)its found 16 viruses! How cool.
might I add Ian that if you go to Internet Explorer under Tools you should regularly use Windows Updater to protect your PC.
wow. aviator. that was a good post. very cool.
are you being sarcastic?
www.lavasoft.de is where you can get Ad-Aware. I highly recommend using it once or twice a month. Cleans your registry and checks your internet folders. And best of all it's FREE!
Yeah I use it all the time. I've actually got just about everyone I know to install and use it on their computers it works great.