Well, for one thing, they aren’t yummy and delicious. Internet cookies are tiny files that are designed to make your user experience a bit friendlier. For example, if you regularly visit a clothing Web site and have created your own “virtual model” for trying on clothes and seeing how they might look on you before you buy, then you wouldn’t want to go through the hassle of recreating this model, complete with measurements, weight, and personal characteristics each time you visited the site, right?

A cookie solves that for you. This tiny file resides on your computer. The next time you visit the Web site, the cookie allows all of your preferences to be displayed on the Web site. This includes personal preferences as well as data that you’ve previously supplied such as credit card information, phone numbers, and addresses. In addition, the cookie tells the Web site owner a bit about your computer such as what your IP address is, browser type, and where you came from (such as a referral source).

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Another type of cookie involves advertising. Web sites regularly feature advertisements. These advertisements place tracking cookies on your computer and are not designed with your convenience in mind. Instead, these advertisements are often part of a huge network of ads. Your single cookie with its own unique identifier is recorded any time you land on a Web site that also uses the advertising network. For example, let’s say you visit twenty web sites, fifteen of which participate in this advertising network. The advertising network knows that you visited these fifteen different websites.

So what? Over time, the advertiser builds a database of your interests based on the types of sites you visit. From this information, the advertiser makes assumptions about your Internet habits and interests and begins serving up targeted advertisements. Privacy concerns surround this type of cookie usage.

Fortunately, your Web browser has settings for accepting or rejecting cookies as well as an area where you can delete cookies. To adjust cookie settings in Internet Explorer, go to Tools, Internet Options, and click on the Privacy tab. From here, you can adjust how your browser deals with cookies. To delete existing cookies, go to the General tab, Browsing History, Delete, Delete Cookies.

Internet cookies have their good and bad points. They’re great for personalized Web site experiences but terrible when used to track surfing behaviors. Set your computer’s Web browser up so that you have adequate protection against the bad cookies and yet can still enjoy returning to legitimate Web sites. Periodically delete all cookies from your computer.

Unfortunately, many malicious programmers create utilities designed to trick users into downloading malware. For example, free screensavers and registry cleaners are often nothing more than lures - once a user nibbles and the program is downloaded, the malware takes over. Not knowing the name of the registry fix utility, I can’t say for sure that this happened to you but it may have.

Since downloading doesn’t appear to be an option, try http://housecall.trendmicro.com/  This is a free web-based scanning tool from Trend Micro, a well respected anti-virus and anti-spyware company. This tool should be able to detect and repair malware on your computer.

If you have Windows Vista, your computer should also have Windows Defender installed on it. This is a built-in tool that scans for malware. While Windows Defender does provide real time protection, if the malware is new, it may not have been caught upon installation. Update Windows Defender and run a full scan to see what Defender finds. Go to the Start button, type in Windows Defender, click the program icon, and then click the arrow next to the question mark. Click Check for Updates. Once updated, click on Scan > Full Scan.

Likewise, run a full scan with your existing anti-virus program. Many anti-virus programs do not provide real time detection. This means that viruses can get in and won’t be detected until a scan takes place.

If your computer comes up clean and the registry program is legitimate, it should have a “restore” feature. For example, RegCure, which is a legitimate registry cleaner from another well respected software developer (ParetoLogic Software), makes backups of the registry before making repairs. Should you ever have undesirable results after a RegCure registry fix, you can always go into the software, click on the Backup button, and restore your registry to its original condition. Check your registry fix utility for such a feature and restore your registry if available. By restoring the registry, your related problems should disappear.

Since your desktop is a mess, and you can’t use System Restore via normal methods, try going into Safe Mode and entering the command prompt for System Restore which is:

%systemroot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe

Instructions for doing so are found in this Microsoft Knowledgebase article.

Does Antispyware software affect my PC Performance

The truth is, any software that you install on your computer will, to a certain extent, slow down your computer. The question is which brand of antispyware you’ve installed, how well it plays together with your existing antivirus software (you are using antivirus software, right?), and whether or not your antispyware software stays resident in your memory, scanning for threats, even when you’re not using it.

Through the years I’ve learned that some brands of antispyware software are well-known to be system resource hogs, using up valuable CPU cycles and RAM without necessarily providing you with the best protection. One particularly notable culprit is the antispyware protection that comes with Norton Internet Security, which takes up a massive amount of system resources and tends to be more trouble than it’s worth.

Others are lean and tight, using the barest minimum of resources required to stay on top of things. Both the free and paid versions of AVG’s Antispyware software run light and clean and integrate easily over preexisting antivirus software. I’m a control freak when it comes to programs running in the background, and AVG has always been my antispyware program of choice.

When it comes to keeping your computer running fast, though, what’s more important than the brand of antispyware software is the presence or lack of “real-time” protection. Antispyware programs that constantly monitor your computer and attempt to stop threats in real time tend to use more system resources. “On-demand” antispyware software, which doesn’t do anything until you remember to run a scan, tends to run much lighter and use up less of your computer’s processing power and memory.

My advice: don’t bother with “real-time” protection for antispyware programs unless you’re truly paranoid or, of course, unless you truly have something to hide. The threats posed by spyware are far less severe than those posed by viruses, and if you can remember to scan your computer for spyware once or twice a week, you should be fine - and, depending on your specs, your computer may run noticeably faster.

 If you use a computer, your actions may not be completely private. For example, if you are using a company computer at your workplace, your employer may be monitoring some, if not all, of your actions. Similarly, your personal computer may have software installed on it that records your usage. This software may be “monitoring” software or it could be “spyware.” What’s the difference?

While both monitoring software and spyware are intrusive, they aren’t the same thing. First, monitoring software is often installed with your knowledge. Employers may have clear policies covering computer and e-mail usage with full disclosure that monitoring software is in place.

Why would your employer want to monitor computer usage? One of the main reasons has to do with productivity. Employees at workstations “look” like they’re working. However, are they really working or are they checking out the latest You Tube videos? Another reason involves liability. For example, if an employee is viewing porn and co-workers are uncomfortable when passing by and seeing the images, a “hostile work environment” has been created.

At home, monitoring software is often used to keep tabs on how the children are using their computers. This type of monitoring software is typically categorized as “parental controls.” Parents can allow and block certain classes of Web sites and games as well as monitor Instant Messages and e-mail. Additional features include setting computer time limits, program usage, and download restrictions.

In addition, legitimate monitoring software could be used for spying. For example, if you have a jealous or suspicious spouse, monitoring software may have been installed on your computer without your knowledge. This type of monitoring reports back to your partner which Web sites you have visited, e-mails sent and received, Instant Messaging and chat transcripts, pictures or videos you have viewed, and other information. These programs are designed to run in the background without your knowledge. You won’t find a desktop icon or the program in your Programs list.

Spyware is another type of program that monitors computer usage. Spyware is installed without your knowledge, often as a hitchhiker to a legitimate download. Once installed, these programs collect data and transmit it to a third party. Each spyware program has its own mission ranging from sending you targeted advertisements based on your Internet history to stealing your financial information by capturing your keystrokes.

There’s not a whole lot that you can do about your employer’s monitoring software other than play by the rules and perform your job as expected. Likewise, if you suspect your spouse has installed monitoring software, you have trust and privacy issues that you will need to work out as well as a potentially dangerous situation should your partner have violent tendencies.  Of all the different types of monitoring, spyware is the easiest to deal with. A good anti-spyware program such as ParetoLogic’s XoftSpySE or Anti-Virus Plus removes existing spyware infections and prevents future ones.

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.

Haven’t you ever wondered if it would be more beneficial to prevent spyware from entering your computer than to simply remove it once it gets there? Well, you can do so and without much effort at all.

Although the initial antispyware programs were designed to sweep and kill, newer versions of antispyware programs were designed with a great more versatility. In fact, today’s antispyware programs can work in real time to provide protection against spyware infestation on a computer in order to prevent it from setting up house on your machine.

This specific form of antispyware activity involves the scanning of all incoming network data. The antispyware program looks at the data to identify any spyware software. If it does recognize any incoming spyware, it will set about to block it from installing on the computer. With real time scanning, the software scans the disk files at the download time during which it will prevent any facets of known spyware from becoming entrenched on the machine.

Plus, it is possible for many of today’s antispyware programs to intercept and thwart any attempt to install start-up elements or to modify browser settings by spyware programs.

While the earliest versions did not offer the real time feature, they were more than capable of removing threats from the computer with their sweep and kill method. The sweep and kill set up is designed to scan the computer for existing threats that have already been installed on the computer. Once these threats have been identified, my antispyware programs take action to remove them even if it is only to tell me what to do next.

Antispyware programs that utilize the sweep and kill process are great for removing spyware that has already been installed on the computer. Plus, this type of set up is quite popular since it is easy to use. There’s no need to remember to schedule the application to run since you set it up once and it consistently completes the task of purging spyware and adware from your computer.

Plus, fewer interruptions are experienced since this type of spyware protection can be set up to run on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. With a sweep and kill design, the antispyware software scans the contents of various facets on the computer. These facets include the windows registry, any installed programs, and operating system files. Once it is finished scanning, it informs the computer user of the threats that have been discovered. It is up to the individual user to select the threats that he wants removed.

Removing files and entries that are known to match a list of identifiable spyware components is the best way to protect the security of your computer system. While programs that work in real time are very efficient, any type of antispyware program is better than no program at all.