Top 10 tips to keep that new computer spyware-free

pchelpman

jjames wrote:

Another good program to have in your arsenal is Hijack This. You need to know what you're looking for

More importantly you need to know what you're looking AT. Many of the things HJT lists are proper, valid entries. If you remove one of those you could well end up trashing your PC.

Also it's often a combination of entries - rather then one entry on its own - that can point to a problem. Even then the answer isn't always easy to find.

Even the author/designer of HJT - Merijn Bellekom - strongly advises users do NOT make any changes to their HJT log without advice from an analyst.

cymro1170

Excellent post sra!

Going to be buying a new laptop tomorrow - so this will keep me busy all afternoon

jjames_3

pchelpman wrote:

More importantly you need to know what you're looking AT. Many of the things HJT lists are proper, valid entries. If you remove one of those you could well end up trashing your PC.

Also it's often a combination of entries - rather then one entry on its own - that can point to a problem. Even then the answer isn't always easy to find.

Even the author/designer of HJT - Merijn Bellekom - strongly advises users do NOT make any changes to their HJT log without advice from an analyst.

Yes, good clarification.

As I am an IT support engineer by trade it's easy to forget where the line is between user and analyst

sra

Bumped!

Because it was a great list.

teddyco

Get rid of your PC and buy a MAC!

meher

sra wrote:

Very good list:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Spyware/index.php?p=733

I was doing 8 of them

EDIT: Some links not working now -
4. New link for Lockdown Internet Explorer
5. MS Antispyware is now Windows Defender

Very useful - but my question has always been what's the point in downloading stuff you don't understand what it means

I think I was doing only 1. 3. and 10. I don't understand the rest. Also I've never ever installed anti-virus because it seems to take time to boot - always have this nagging suspicion that anti-virus by itself is such a virus.

albertross_2

You'll learn what they mean quickly when you catch one, if you aren't infected already.

2&5 shouldn't slow your PC down that much unless you have XP with <256MB of ram.

wolfman

Lol, no AV. Good luck.

I do most of them. Instead of 2 Anti-spyware apps I use one. It was Spyware Doctor, but I now use CounterSpy (which costs £10). It provides realtime prevention too. I believe the MS AntiSpyware runs off an earlier engine of CounterSpy.

The only one I don't really do, is use a custom hosts file. It can cause system slow downs due to the way DNS works. In which case from what I've read, simply disabling the Windows DNS service will fix this.

T4i

wolfman wrote:

In which case from what I've read, simply disabling the Windows DNS service will fix this.

Be careful disabling the DNS service though if you use certain modems via USB. Without the DNS service running you won't be able to surf (as I found out after an hour on one of my last jobs)

wolfman

T4i wrote:

Be careful disabling the DNS service though if you use certain modems via USB. Without the DNS service running you won't be able to surf (as I found out after an hour on one of my last jobs)

Oops, yeah. Should have made that more clear. I go through a router/modem so it handles all the dns for me.