General Question

iamatypeofwalrus's avatar

Spyware....argggh!

Asked by iamatypeofwalrus (259points) May 18th, 2008

So my girlfriend’s mother asks me to check out her laptop because she continually gets pop ups “alerting” her that her computer has a virus on it. After numerous attempts to remove the spyware to no avail, I’ve almost given up.

Can anyone recommend a good, and preferably free, spyware remover for windows? I’d really hate to have to reinstall windows but it’s incredibly frustrating for her mother. Plus, brownie points are awesome.

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11 Answers

kevbo's avatar

avast, avg, and spybot search and destroy

kevbo (25672points)“Great Answer” (3points) Flag as…
Response moderated
Response moderated
Big88's avatar

avast is good to prevent viruses and is free but won’t remove some spyware. Go to superantispyware.com and download the free version. It works great. Depending on how bad the spyware is you might need to run it multiple times. Just run it till the only thing that it detects are tracking cookies which are harmless.

Big88 (107points)“Great Answer” (0points) Flag as…
richardhenry's avatar

Spybot Search and Destroy, definately Google for it. Super-Anti Spyware seems like spyware itself, so I wouldn’t use that.

richardhenry (12692points)“Great Answer” (1points) Flag as…
iwamoto's avatar

well, you could also run hitman pro if you’re already infected…

iwamoto (5277points)“Great Answer” (0points) Flag as…
Big88's avatar

I was skeptical about superantipyware myself but it worked great. It got some hardcore spyware off my computer that avast, avg, spybot, or adaware couldn’t get because I tried them all.

Big88 (107points)“Great Answer” (0points) Flag as…
Magnus's avatar

Back in the day when I had a PC I used Ad-Aware. Run it regularly to scan your PC for Spyware. It’s very good and doesn’t cost a thing!

Magnus (2884points)“Great Answer” (2points) Flag as…
psyla's avatar

Back before I had a Mac and my PC was continually infested with viruses, I’d run WipeDrive then reinstall Windows.

psyla (2544points)“Great Answer” (1points) Flag as…
Tennis5tar's avatar

It could be a trojan, I just got one on my laptop. I’m having it re-set to the manufacturers settings… apparently that’s the only way to 100% knock it out.

Tennis5tar (1263points)“Great Answer” (0points) Flag as…

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