Ah, spyware, it’s the ever-looming threat of a destructive program finding its way on to your computer system, secretly rummaging through your folders, looking for sensitive personal and financial information and impeding with your legitimate use as it executes its devious functions. If your computer has suddenly slowed drastically, if you think you can hear your computer working even when you aren’t issuing commands, or if you think that programs are taking too long to respond, you might have a spyware infection. Still, while a spyware program running operations in the background of your system will slow things down, a slow computer doesn’t necessarily mean infestation.
Over time, files and folders on your computer build up. Numerous programs and applications take a lot of space on both your RAM and your hard drive. Even if you have deleted data by moving it to the recycling bin or trash can, the information continues to be stored on the computer until the trash or recycling is emptied. If your computer has slowed down over time, check the recycling bin and make sure that you don’t need anything in there before emptying the contents.
Another thing that can slow your computer down is a buildup of information on the registry. Every time your computer executes a command, it makes a log of the action and stores it on the registry, which is like a catalogue of the computer’s processes. When too many bits on data build up on the registry it becomes cluttered. As a result, the clutter on the registry makes the computer work harder to process commands and perform tasks, as it has to search through the entire contents of the registry to find the appropriate data. You can avoid this by running a registry cleaner, available online for download or purchase, which will search the registry for bits of data belonging to replaced, deleted, or redundant programs and prompt the user to remove them, Cleaning the registry will speed up performance and optimize the system.
If these suggestions don’t speed things up, and you think you have a spyware program running on your system, you should perform an up-to-date virus scan. Make sure that you have all the latest updates and patches from you security software provider’s website and run the scan until it comes up clean.
Be very careful whenever downloading security software, hackers and malware programmers are known to hide their viruses inside so called anti-virus packages. To protect yourself against downloading spyware programs, there are security utilities, like ParetoLogic Anti-Spyware, that are specifically designed to create a barrier around your system and watch for unwanted and persistent downloads. If a program is attempting the get on to your system, the anti-spyware tool will alert you and offer a range of blocking options. Rather than only finding and removing destructive programs operating on your system, anti-spyware programs are active in defending your computer, allowing you to program scheduled scans and other personalized preferences.
Kate Dubensky | August 8th, 2008
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