General Question

RareDenver's avatar

PC help! Anti-adware/spyware solutions.

Asked by RareDenver (13173points) August 19th, 2009

I recently bought my wife a laptop and installed AVG anti-virus and Windows Defender (it’s running Windows XP). She uses Firefox. All was well for a couple weeks but in the last week she gets loads of extra Mozilla windows (not tabs) with all manner of ads (bingo, acia berry, adult friendfinder, online poker etc.) and the speed has slowed dramatically, not just her browsing speed but general computing speed, takes ages to open applications and stuff.

What can I do? We don’t have these issues with our home desktop.

Any suggestions? Any additional protection software I could install?

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7 Answers

dynamicduo's avatar

You need a spyware remover that doesn’t suck. Get Spybot Search and Destroy as well as Ad-Aware, both are free and you can find the links through Google.

RareDenver's avatar

@dynamicduo okay so I’ve just installed them two here on the desktop and they are not free, once it scans it tells you to register and asks for payment. It does offer a discount for two machines. My question is, is it worth it?

robmandu's avatar

Spybot Search & Destroy is indeed free (as in beer). You can elect to give them a donation, but there is no requirement to pay in order to use the software.

Ad-Aware comes in four flavors. The one labeled “Free” is indeed free (as in beer). If you chose Plus or Pro, then you might consider trying Free first and see if it resolves your problem by itself.

dynamicduo's avatar

Please use the links that Rob has provided. Both of them are completely free to use to scan, you have downloaded the wrong version.

RareDenver's avatar

@dynamicduo Hi, yeah, these links are very different to the first two apps I found, just doing the biz on the home PC and if I like what I see I’ll move on to the wifes laptop.

Thanks guys :-)

PerryDolia's avatar

Use Spyware Blaster to get rid of that crap. link Its free and better than Spybot.

Response moderated (Spam)

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