How to secure Windows and remove any viruses and spyware
The only way to truly protect yourself is three fold: run protection to stop virus and spyware from running, block the sites that house spyware and prevent your apps from running spyware.
- Use a good virus scanner, the best you can buy is NOD32 ($39/yr) or Kaspersky ($49/yr). Even if you don't plan on buying it, use the 30 day trial to remove the spyware and/or viruses you currently.
If you don't wish to purchase a good virus scanner, two decent free options are AVG and Avast. Be warned that free AV solutions DO NOT have as good virus protection as a commercial package and give poor spyware protection, but free is better than nothing.
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Any good Anti Virus has built in anti spyware, but it won't hurt to assist it with a complimentary program such as Windows Defender which is a free Anti Spyware tool from Microsoft, which you need to add to XP, but it's built into Vista. On top of this, I would also run Spybot S&D because, it's not an active spyware preventer like Defender or your AV is, instead it's a manual process you run to scan your PC. The biggest reason I recommend it is that it's not maintained by a company, so there is no commercial interests or agenda.
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Now that you have proper monitoring, it's time to prevent spyware and viruses from running from your Internet related apps. Following this 3 step guide which tells you how to install and use DropMyRights, which is a Microsoft program that will prevent spyware and viruses from running through IE, Firefox, AIM, IRC, Winamp, etc.
Please note: Vista automatically runs IE in a protected mode, but you should still use this app on Firefox and other internet and audio apps to protect them too.
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Finally you should install HostsMan which will update your network HOSTS file and block any known spyware/virus sites. What this means is that known exploit sites well be blocked, so your computer can't access them. These are sites viruses report back to and/or use to re-infect your system.
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." -- Albert Einstein
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