| Author: Paul McGill |
Every once in a while, spyware gets the best of us. I have had clients whose machines wouldn't start because of the amount of spyware on their machines. So what do you do when spyware brings your computer to its knees? Don't go running and screaming. Here are some really good strategies to get you going again.
If the computer boots, you can check out what is loading upon startup of the computer. Click on "Start," go to "Run," and type "msconfig." Now, click on the "Startup" tab and take a look at the list. You should be careful here. You don't want to stop a system critical item from loading. A lot of times you can see what program the startup item relates to in the command column listing. If you can't see the full path, you can expand it by hovering over the right edge of the column heading, clicking, and then dragging it to the right. That should help. To disable an item, just uncheck it. You want to find items that have obvious names first. Things like "ho0894huhudsuifhg" are obvious culprits. Once you have checked the items, you can click "Ok." It will ask you to restart. Go ahead and do so. Now, when the computer boots back up you will receive a message saying something about your computer starting in a diagnostic mode. Make sure the box at the bottom of the box is checked or you will receive this message each time you restart.
If you can boot your computer, but you are constantly barraged by popups and advertisements, you still have options. You can right click on the task bar at the bottom (the bar that has the start button) and select the "task manager." The task manager allows you to stop offending applications. This is a good thing to do when a program becomes stuck too. Most likely, the spyware program won't show up in the "Programs" listing. But, it will show up in the "Processes" tab. Go there and check out the list. You may have to do a little research to find out what name you're looking for. More sophisticated spyware have official sounding names, so you may have to dig a little. Google is your friend here. If you don't want to mess with that there is always system restore (XP). Simply click on "Start," go to "All Programs," go to "Accessories," and finally "System Tools." You will find system restore there. But, if you are running an operating system prior to XP, try the other options I am giving you.
So, what happens when you can't even boot? Again, there are options. The first thing we want to do is try to start in "Safe Mode." The easiest way to do this is by following this procedure. Shut down your computer the safe way. Please don't simply pull the power, unless you can't do anything when in Windows. Now, turn the power on and start hitting the F8 key every second, methodically. The F8 key is up on the top row, along the same row as the "esc" key. This will bring up the Windows Startup Menu. Select "Safe Mode" from that list. You should see a bunch of unusual lines scrolling saying something about multi-disk. Now, when safe mode appears it will ask if you want to do a system restore. I would try that first. If that doesn't work, I would go into safe mode and try the items I mentioned above.
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