Spyware

[JasonLFunk]

A friend of mines computer is being stupid. It takes forever to boot up, both in normal and safe mode. I tried starting with last known good config, nothing helps. Also the start bar dosen't load. I installed spysweeper but it will not open, it just stops responding. He is on cable and didn't have a firewall, I asume it is spyware that's killing his comp. Neither of us want to just completly reformat his comp snince it won't let me burn cds. Any suggestions?

[Force Flow]

Boot up in safe mode and run adaware and spybot. That should clean the system out enough so you can operate decently. Once you are able to boot up in normal mode again, update the definitions and scan again. Make sure you updade and scan with an AV program. AVG is free, in case there isn't one installed.

[JasonLFunk]

Safemode didn't boot correctly. start bar didn't come up and spysweeper still didn't respond.

[kilgoretrout]

If you can boot up at all try installing spybot search and destroy and/or Ad-Aware. Both are freely downloadable.

[JasonLFunk]

Please Read, I installed Spysweeper but it stops responding when I open it. As does Norton.

[Force Flow]

Don't open them, then.

See if you can boot up into safe mode with networking. If so, run this online virus scan: http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

[kilgoretrout]

I realize that spyseeper is locking up; that's why it's been recommended twice that you try different spyware detection programs, namely spybot or ad-aware.

[glc]

I had a Win98 machine the other day that was locking up on both Ad-Aware and Spybot S&D - but Spy Sweeper finally worked. Go figure - you DO need to try different programs. However, if it's so screwed up that it won't even boot properly into safe mode, you MAY be looking at a reformat anyway, like it or not.

Don't assume just spyware - if there was no firewall, I'm betting this person also did not maintain an antivirus, and it's very likely loaded up with viruses and trojans too. You may have to pull the hard drive and slave it into another PROTECTED machine - and scan the drive for viruses, spyware, etc. that way. This will find bad files, but it won't fix the registry - it may get it clean enough to work again, but it will need further scanning once the drive is put back.

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If you are technically inclined:

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

I've built one of these - with the Ad-Aware, McAfee command line virus scanner, and Stinger plugins. It does a pretty decent job of killing a lot of crap, but it won't do any registry cleaning either.