PCTips Box

Slow computer getting you down? Wish you could speed up your system so that games won’t crawl by like a slide show permanently set to slow? Well look no further! I shall share five easy steps that you can take to improve your system’s speed! Most of them are free of charge, and all of them should have some effect on your system. So without further ado, we begin with:

1. Remove spyware and adware from your system. Have you noticed recently that ads seem to pop up whenever you go to a Web page? Or that Internet speeds are about that of diseased livestock? Your system’s probably chock full of spyware. What to do? Well, thankfully there are several things you can do. First, download either Spybot-S&D or Lavasoft’s Ad-Aware, and run it. This should remove most if not all of the spyware and adware on your system. Neither of these are particularly robust, however, so we move on to: (more…)

If you have been on the Internet for any length of time, you’ve probably ran across the topic of spyware, adware, or malware. This is software that has installed on your computer, many times without your permission, or accidentally by clicking on a popup ad, etc. The problem with these programs is they will slow your computer down, make changes to your desktop, homepage, search page, load programs into your taskbar tray and otherwise get in the way. In the worst cases, they will even transmit information from your computer to servers on the Internet.
So the question becomes, if your computer is infected with these problematic programs, how do you get rid of them. In most cases, you can run a free removal program to remove these infections, in more serious cases, you may have to download a specialized removal program to free yourself of these problems. (more…)

The flood of spyware, adware, and malware of all stripes doesn’t seem likely to abate anytime soon. Antivirus software alone isn’t enough to keep it in check, because a lot of malware programs aren’t viruses or worms in the traditional sense. They’re products developed by halfway-legitimate companies that take advantage of users who are careless or rushed—those of us who don’t bother to read the tedious legalese of programs’ end-user license agreements during installation
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