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You might try this link, just going to it, will let you know if your PC has been infected by this crap.

http://www.stopscum.com/

They also do a decent job of educating you on the issues.
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<font color=skyblue>Woah!
It found stuff that I thougt had been cleaned off!
Cool site!</font>

A great site Magik. I've found that Spybot does a much better (and much faster) job than ad-aware. Trying out the site reminded me that I hadn't updated in a while. I ran spybot this morning and after downloading the update, ran it again and found 14 items that I didn't want.

<font color="#ffccff">Just now checking out spybot [img]smile.gif[/img] thanks for the heads up Antryg.</font>

Spybot's awesome, but be careful.... unlike Ad Aware, it can really screw your system up. ;)

Only remove the items in red! All the exclamation points are red, but the item names are red, black or aqua. Red is spyware that's safe to remove. Black is system stuff you shouldn't remove unless you really know what you're doing. Aqua is log type entries that shouldn't mess anything up, but will effect your most recently played/viewed/etc listed items in programs. Aqua also includes cookies. You can set it to ignore some (like IW), and then cleaning the cookies list only removes the stuff you don't want.

Both Spybot and Ad-Aware are worth using, as they find some things the other doesn't, but Spybot is the superior product of the two.

Thanks for that great reminder Ronn. I don't ever delete the aqua colored ones either. I only delete the red ones. I've never had a systems problem using this approach. I do use ad-aware, but my number one favorite and most used is spybot.

<font color="#ffccff">Wowzers, there was a lot of trash on my work machine...can't wait to get home and check my home machines with Spybot. </font>

antryg, the first time I used Spybot I removed all the aqua stuff, too. I'd read about the dangers of the black, and avoided it like the plague, but the aqua is safe to remove. Fortunately, the aqua is easy to restore...lol. [img]smile.gif[/img]

I don't remove anything aqua anymore except for the cookies.

Another great cleanup tool is jv16. It's an improved version of regclean (freeware not the MS version). This tool can help clean your startup, be used to add/remove programs, remove duplicate files, and remove invalid registry keys. It can also be quite dangerous, but if you only remove the safe items, and the things you're sure of, it's great. Check it out here.

[ 02-24-2003, 01:10 PM: Message edited by: Ronn_Bman ]

<font color=skyblue>After visting that website, and learning that I still had spyware somewhere on my machine, I ran spybot, regedit, and adaware to remove it, but it would not even find the file that Magik's url linked website mentioned...so...I went to the temp. downloaded programs and found the item in activeX format, under a strange name. Recognizing that as the most probable one, I deleted that activeX file, and now that website cannot see any more trouble.</font>

<font color="#ffccff">Sneaky bastiches really make you work to keep themout, you need to use all the different software utilities to get rid of them all :( </font>

It's just like viruses, a new virus is made, anti-virus update is made then another new virus is made... etc. Same with spyware. *sigh* it will never end. Oh well there are greater problems in the world ;)

cool, this might come into handy.

Thanx Magik, your a true blue IW simaritan.

<font color="#ffccff">Your welcome but I am just doing what all the other IW forum members do, and that is sharing information [img]smile.gif[/img] We all come here because we have some common interests [img]smile.gif[/img] </font>

i use adware to clear out my closet :D

I've know clue what my dad uses. I think its one of the latest versions of Norton.

I use Adaware 6 now, great lil program and now even easier to update. Nice page though Magik!

Wolfgir, I've got adaware 6 and have found that spybot will find and get rid of some things that adaware misses. I find that using both of them cleans my machine best.