I have 196 SpyWare and AdWare parasites on my computer right now!

[trof]

jeez
I just bought SpyKiller for $39.95.
Did I do right?

[ramapo]

1. That's not so many

I've had hundreds...mostly cookies.

The problem is when you get Gator or Kazaa or one of those which open the back door to all kinds of crap.

AdWare won't save you then. That's format and reinstall time.

[Bossy Monkey]

2. Well I wouldn't say you did wrong...

but most people feel that Ad-Aware and Spybot-Search&Destroy, both free, do at least as good a job as the commercial software available. And yeah, 196 is a pretty typical number of scumware items to be caught the first time you run any of these. I put Ad-Aware and Spybot on my girlfriend's notebook the other day and caught 189 with Ad-Aware and another 34 with Spybot. If you can still take SpyKiller back, take it back.

[Rabrrrrrr]

3. I'd second that - take back SpyKiller and get adaware

and spybot, since they are free, and work perfectly marvellously.

[trof]

5. Tried adaware and could never get it to work.

Contacted them and got instructions about going into DOS mode and doing stuff that is WAY too complicated for this non-geek.
Spykiller is all pointy-clicky.

[ulysses]

6. DOS?

Not sure why they'd have you go into DOS - I just upgraded to AdAware 6 and it works like a charm, the pointy-clicky stuff too. :) At any rate, it's better to pay for something than to have nothing.

[Bossy Monkey]

9. Are you absolutely sure you had Ad-Aware?

It's from Lavasoft in Sweden. I ask because when I suggested my gf get Ad-Aware, she put it in Google without the hyphen and was about to download something called Ada-ware, which might be perfectly great, but looks suspicious due to how similar the name is to that of the Swedish software. Anyway, just a thought. I've found Ad-Aware to be totally pointy-clicky, but maybe I'm just lucky.

[Rabrrrrrr]

10. Never had a problem with it - download, install, run

bip bang bock.

DOS mode sounds all fishy and weird. What windows are you running? Perhaps if you are older windows, ad-aware freaked out on you.

[Bundbuster]

4. Advice on "Spy Sweeper" by Webroot, to be installed today?

Sitting unopened on my desk, ready to be installed today. My files have grown from 37,000 6 months ago to 120,000 now, with NO new software or files additions by me except Norton weekly updates. I've deleted Temporary Files & History daily, defragged weekly, and deleted most bookmarks - all to no avial. My last resort is installing this Spy Sweeper, but that's certainly not going to eliminate 80,000 files, no? Could all those added files be just normal cookies?

All comments & suggestions welcomed - I feel like my computer has a raging cancer and needs medical advice.

**BTW - how does one check the numbers of files on one's PC hard drive, without running the anti-virus program?

[SoCalDem]

7. Yay.. you win

:)

[IronLionZion]

8. Ad-Aware would have done the job for free

you can get it from www.download.com