Spyware Troubleshooting Guidelines

 

You should be aware that spyware infections can be very difficult to remedy, depending on what specific type your computer is infected with, how the spyware infection is created, how it proliferates and what tools you have available to identify and remove them.

If you don’t consider yourself an advanced computer user, or if you don't want to spend a lot of time on tackling such problems, you may want to consider getting professional help to remove spyware problems.

There are two primary tasks involved when trying to remedy a spyware problem:

1 Identify the specific spyware on your computer.

2 Remove the spyware found in task one.

The simply and best way is automatically through the use of anti-spyware software.

Anti-spyware software is specifically designed to identify and remove malicious software. The benefit to you is that anti-spyware software usually requires very little effort on your part.  

Here’s what you’ll need to:

1.  1. Purchase and install an anti-spyware application on the affected computer. For recommendations on which anti-spyware application to use.

2.  2. Scan your computer with your anti-spyware software. Scanning will allow you to identify what is infecting your computer. Detection methods are a key quality indicator. An anti-spyware package that supports drive scans, memory scans and registry scans will catch most spyware.

    3. Remove any infections that are identified during the scan. The most important feature of an anti-spyware program is definitely its ability to find and remove spyware. How well it does this is heavily dependent on the quality of its detection database and on the scope of detection.  

    4. Ensure your anti-spyware with a quarantine and recovery system. A scan may produce false positives, or, more likely, delete spyware that you find you need. Many applications that are bundled with spyware will perform a check to see if the spyware is still installed, and will not function if you have deleted the spyware from your system. If that's the case, you can either choose to live with the spyware or without the desired software. If you choose the former, a recovery system will allow you to restore the spyware to its former glory.

    5. Update the anti-spyware applications. This can ensure they have the latest spyware definitions. This will make sure all of the latest spyware can be identified. 

    Good anti-spyware also has a whitelist system. A whitelist system works like a firewall's allow or disallow system - you indicate that you've allowed this spyware, and the anti-spyware will not ask again.

    So, the questions to ask about the anti spyware removal system include:

#Does it remove all files and directories associated with the spyware?

#Does it remove Windows registry keys?

#Does it remove the spyware from the Windows uninstall list?

#Does it offer a reboot option if it can't delete files?

#Does it offer a restoration feature if I want to re-install the removed software?

#Can I tell it not to detect a given piece of spyware in the future?

#Can I customise what it scans?