This article will not tell you everything there is to know about spyware, or even everything about this software. What it will do, is guide you through running program to clean your pc of as much spyware as possible, quickly and easily.

Briefly, what is spyware?

According to Answers.com:

“Software that sends information about your Web surfing habits to its Web site. Often quickly installed in your computer in combination with a free download you purposely selected from Web, spyware transmits information in background as you move around Web. Also known as "parasite software," "scumware," "junkware" and "thiefware, spyware is occasionally installed just by visiting a Web site.”

Spyware can also change you homepage, cause pop-up ads, slow down your computer, and more, all without your knowledge or real consent. If you’ve been affected by spyware through pop-ups and strange homepages in your web browser, you know exactly how real problem is. Even if you haven’t, ridding your computer of spyware should speed up it up, along with your overall internet experience. Removing spyware will also help restore privacy to your web browsing.

Let’s get started with Ad-Aware

When you’re ready to begin cleaning your computer, close all your open applications and go to www.lavasoft.com and click on link for www.download.com. Download file to somewhere on your computer you can find, stay online if your connection is not always on, and then open file to start installation. Read licensing agreement, and when you are ready to agree, accept standard installation options unless you have some special need to change them. The final screen of install looks like:

I unchecked “Open help file now” box because I didn’t want to see it. If you do, just leave it checked, and help box will open in background while rest of program begins and runs.

The other two buttons should be left checked. The program will actually update definitions first, and then scan your system with new updated definitions. One note, be sure your computer calendar is on correct day or else definitions will try to update twice for no reason.

Here is web update. You can see definitions file is from September 13, 2004. The web update will download newest definitions, most likely from last few days.

When update is complete scan of your computer will commence with this screen:

The scan will take anywhere from a few minutes to half an hour or even longer, depending on size of you hard disks, speed of your computer, and amount of spyware found. I checked my e-mail while this scan was running, but your best bet is probably to just let your computer be while scan runs. The scan will be faster this way as well…

On upper right of your keyboard you almost certainly have a key that looks something like:

Forget about SysRq key for now, it won’t do much good unless your running Linux and doing more in Linux than just using your computer for day to day tasks. The print screen key however, is a very valuable tool for everyone running Microsoft Windows.

Have you ever wanted to show someone exactly what is on your screen? Maybe you have an error message and easiest way to describe it is to simply show someone message. With ‘Print Screen’ you can.

Just give it a try. Hit ‘Print Screen’ on your keyboard. You may notice a very brief pause on screen, or you my not, it isn’t important. Now open up any image editing program. I usually just use Microsoft Paint (Start Menu- Programs-accessories-Paint), because it comes with windows. You can use any image editor you are comfortable with.

Now go to Edit-Paste, and you should get your screen capture pasted into Paint.

You may already be thinking how simple and powerful this button is, and you’re right. There is just a little more to it.

Page 2, shrinking your screen

The image so far is probably much too big to be useful. It’s a copy of your whole screen, so it takes up your whole screen. It’d be a very large file to e-mail in this state. Thankfully it’s simple to resize image.

In Paint, just go up to ‘Image-Stretch/Skew’, as shown here: