Spyware removal and general tuneup...

[JIMINATOR]

As a further note, sometimes in control panel, add/remove programs,
you will have programs that cannot be uninstalled.
To see these:

Run the Registry Editor (REGEDIT.EXE).
Open HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft&#0 92;Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall

These are the entries that show up under add remove programs.

Click on each key under uninstall to see what it contains.
On the right hand side, there will be a "DisplayName" that shows up in the control panel,
and a "UninstallString" - this is the program that is run to do the uninstalling.

Many times the program will not run, or an uninstall may have halfway completed.

You can go and look for the program/directory shown in the UninstallString,
if it is obviously where the program installed, you can delete the entire folder.

To delete an entry from the registry, just click the key on the left and press the
delete button. It will then no longer appear in add/remove programs.

Note, that this is not a good way of uninstalling programs, and should only be used
to delete crap from your system that you want gone and cannot otherwise get rid
of. With the registry, if you delete the wrong key, bad things can happen. always
look to the left to see which folder is open before deleting.

[FlameRush]

A real nasty spyware to look out for is Ezula, hard to remove, I only found makin the directory read only, and hiding it work so far, no pop ups, cause you delete it, it comes back, its a nasty bug that buries itself deep into your comp, Jim is right, may they be claimed as viruses, then microsoft maybe will make something like that, but theres a program from a company yet who has helped microsoft, and netscape from what I heard, its MoZilla, I dont think that browser can be hijacked, and netscape hasnt been hijacked for me once...

[Dangerous Dan]

i say the best way to get out of spyware is just a good clean reformat, it's pretty simple and only takes a few hours

[Caged Anger]

yes, and then you surf for 5 minutes and one can prepare themselves for another couple hours of merriment

[Slice]

i say the best way to get out of spyware is just a good clean reformat, it's pretty simple and only takes a few hours

No way, just run Spybot and Adaware. If you are on dial up, you definately want a software firewall (such as Nortons) as well since dial up modems do not offer any hardware firewall protection like high speed does.

[JIMINATOR]

dial up is probably safer than dsl/cable, reason being that the latter are probably 24/7 connections, often with static ip, whereas dialup depends more on the actual usage patterns, and dynamic ip is the norm... cable will act as a dhcp server, i don't know how it handles forwarding, but people that connect to dsl using pppoe have no hardware protection...

[Slice]

dial up is probably safer than dsl/cable, reason being that the latter are probably 24/7 connections, often with static ip, whereas dialup depends more on the actual usage patterns, and dynamic ip is the norm... cable will act as a dhcp server, i don't know how it handles forwarding, but people that connect to dsl using pppoe have no hardware protection...

I disagree. When I was on dial up I got the most attacks (as many as 200 per day) and my Norton's software firewall was always alerting me of port scans taking place. Reason being is all your ports are wide open on dial up. In fact, crackers are able to find out the deticated range of ips that internet providers use for their dial up accounts and scan those the most because they know that most people don't run software firewalls.

[Caged Anger]

I have had Zone Alarm for just over a week now

Current Blocked Accesses: 4,327

That number just increased by 2 in the time i wrote this.

[Fantum309]

I am total agreement with using Zone Alarm, Spybot S&D and adaware, but, user be warned. If you should remove something called a BHO, (Browser Helper Object) and you lose your internet connection, that means the BHO took your socket. In which case you will need to run WinSockFix to be able to get back online.

My suggestion is, find and download Winsockfix into your program folder and just sit on it. If you lose your internet connection just after running adaware, spybot or any other spyware type program, just jump into your program files and run WinSockFix to replace the socket and get you back online.

[Caged Anger]

care to provide a link?