What the best Free Spyware tool

I'm a professional IT consultant, have had my own one-man business for about 25 years now, and often am called upon to support people having problems with infected computers.

First off, for my own business I've chosen to use a paid solution, Panda Internet Security. It offers both antivirus, antimalware and a firewall. I must say that on my own computer problems with viruses and spyware are almost non-existent, even though, as a professional, I use the internet extensively.

When one of my customers won't follow my advice on going for a paid solution, I usually installs AVG software for them. If they don't have a firewall, I at least check that their Windows firewall is turned on.

Visiting a customer with problems, my toolbox mainly consists of;

• CCleaner

Originally Posted by Dave777 And make sure you're using this must have tool! 285 million downloads or so... CCleaner - Home Dave

Originally Posted by markov ----- By the way, I've seen here a CCleaner recommendation. It's not a spyware removal tool.

Yes, CCleaner is not a spyware removal tool. On the other side, if the computer's still at the point where you're able to download/install software, this is the first thing I install and run. It helps me remove all kinds of temporary files. It also helps me clean up lots of leftovers in the system registry. The temporary files can easily go into the gigabytes, and there can be thousands of them. Running CCleaner before you start employing other tools can substantially cut down on the time it takes for you to run these other tools.

• Msconfig (Microsofts own tool)

I use this one to stop programs that, at least to me, seem obvious candidates for my malware hunt from starting up again after a reboot of the computer. Sometimes it does the trick and makes the rest of the removal process far easier, sometimes it doesn't, and the malware turns up again with a new startup filename.

• Spybot Search & Destroy
• Ad-Aware
• MalwareBytes AntiMalware
• Online antivirus/antimalware tools (like Panda's and Trend's)
• The solution already installed on the customers computer, if any

If I, at some point in the process, can see that those tools won't do the job alone, I start employing the means that I feel are meant to be used only by the more professional or semi-professional amongst us.

That is;

• Opening up the registry editor, Regedit (Microsofts own tool), manually deleting the startup references for malware that has managed to put something in there.
• Running HijackThis. This also gives me a lot of possibilities to delete things that are in some way started up/installed automatically.

Originally Posted by Spencer Westwood ---- Occasionally you'll need to delve around with rootkit finders and hijjackthis but you need experience to use those kinds of tools otherwise you can hose the system. -----

Yes, tools like the above can be dangerous to use if you don't quite know what you're doing. You can easily delete things that was not meant to be deleted. This can cause you worse problems than you exeperienced initially. Even someone like me, with my background, often use a second computer to check out strange looking startup elements on the internet. They often end up being quite legitimate.

This became a little bit more than a simple recommendation.

I hope it can be of some help to somebody though.

I use Advanced system care 3 because it does just about everything you need to do to keep your system running well and junk free. You can get it at download.com and best of all it's free!!

Andy

Spybot, Search and Destroy & AVG is what has always worked well for me.


-Sarge