Speed up system - ad ware removal??

[Noek]

Can anyone recommend some good anti virus/adware or spyware removal software either shareware or bought?

i am basically looking to speed up my system and clean it up as it has gotten increasingly slow over the last year or so. It is a Dell XPSM11710 laptop and I seem to remember it booting and running a lot faster than it has been lately. I have removed all startup in msconfig but it still runs sloooooow so I am thinking the next step is cleaning it up. Thank you!!!

[wh666-666]

I use several in conjunction with each other, all free. I use one scanner at a time along with one maintenance program, for instance a-squared and hijack this or superantispyware and auslogics defrag.

You may need a restart after each scanner has finished to remove infections. Use all of the scanners in safe mode (hit f8 on startup) for best results.

Use them all in order starting with the first in the list.




Scanners

- Superantispyware
- Asquared free
- Mbam
- Smitfraudfix (run this on its own)





Maintenance/other programs

- Everest home (check temps, etc. If your temps are slightly high, when your laptop is switched off, you can hold a vacuum hose up to the vents.)
- Hi-jack this
- Run a windows checkdisk from tools while waiting for other scans or if you prefer to do it upon reboot type chkdsk /f /r in to a cmd box.
- Auslogics defrag (far faster than windows and defrags properly first time, any defragmented rate above 15% at the end report will give you better results)



NB: Be sure to run the updaters for definition files on the scanners before using, Also untick the option for background full time protection, that just bogs down your system.

[OS-Wiz]

I use several in conjunction with each other, all free. I use one scanner at a time along with one maintenance program, for instance a-squared and hijack this or superantispyware and auslogics defrag.

You may need a restart after each scanner has finished to remove infections. Use all of the scanners in safe mode (hit f8 on startup) for best results.

Use them all in order starting with the first in the list.




Scanners

- Superantispyware
- Asquared free
- Mbam
- Smitfraudfix (run this on its own)

Maintenance/other programs

- Everest home (check temps, etc. If your temps are slightly high, when your laptop is switched off, you can hold a vacuum hose up to the vents.)
- Hi-jack this
- Run a windows checkdisk from tools while waiting for other scans or if you prefer to do it upon reboot type chkdsk /f /r in to a cmd box.
- Auslogics defrag (far faster than windows and defrags properly first time, any defragmented rate above 15% at the end report will give you better results)

NB: Be sure to run the updaters for definition files on the scanners before using, Also untick the option for background full time protection, that just bogs down your system.

+1 but I'd add AdAware and Spybot (both free too)

[Un4given]

AVG also makes a very good free AV program. If you purchase you also get spyware, firewall, rootkit, e-mail scanner, and some other things as well.

[soupnazi]

Combofix for really bad spyware

[Noek]

Thanks for all the good tips and links. I know this topic is constantly covered but it needs to be since there are always new and sometimes better programs available.

I was surprised to see that people were still using spybot and Hijack this but if they work, they work.

Thanks again!

[BernieDD]

Don't forget to clean the system of old, unnecessary files (use disk cleanup). Also, scandisk for errors and bad sectors, then defragment your hard drive. Finally, I remove all files in my windows\temp folder that are dated older than a week from the current date. Oh yeah, I also use the search command and have it find all files *.tmp and delete any that are more than a week old. Of course, these apply mostly to my OS that is XP. But it's not that different from Vista either.

[BernieDD]

I ran CCleaner (registry cleaner) on a 5 year old desktop running Win XP a week ago. It had become slow as molasses over the years. CCleaner removed more than 250 MB of junk in the hard drive, and the improvement in speed afterwards was unbelievable.

I used an older version I had downloaded in another computer of mine. A newer version that's still free to use might still be easy to find on the Net.

[Ubon94]

+1 for ccleaner
Avira is my number one choice follow by Microsoft Security Essential
Panda cloud has really improved recently..