Removing Adware and Spyware

There are a number of products available to help you remove and prevent the installation of adware and spyware. I have recommended Ad-aware in the past, and in fact, with the newest version, it is still a good choice for removal of spyware and adware. Unfortunately if you want to use it to prevent installation of spyware and adware you need to purchase the commercial version. Ad-aware can also be a little confusing to configure and is a little less effective at removing some offending software than is Spybot Search & Destroy.

Spybot Search & Destroy is freeware created and maintained by Patrick Kolla, a student at the University of Dormund, Germany. There is no commercial version, so all features are available to anyone for free. Spybot Search & Destroy offers an easy mode and an advanced mode. The easy mode just hides some of the settings and functions. I suggest using the advanced mode so that you can get the most out of the software.

After downloading and installing Spybot Search & Destroy, you will want to use the search for updates function to make sure you have the latest spyware signatures. Just as with anti-virus software, you need to keep Spybot Search & Destroy up to date to provide the most protection.

There are many settings you can configure, but running with the default settings is fine for you first “search & destroy” mission. Click on the “find problems” button and Spybot Search & Destroy will check your hard drive and registry for known spyware and adware. Once the scan is finished, all of the spyware and adware components found will be listed with a checkbox. The ones where removal is highly recommended will be pre-checked. If you click the “fix selected problems” button the offending programs and settings will be removed and backed up in case something needs to be restored.

You may be wondering why you would ever want to restore spyware or adware. There are a couple possible reasons. One is that even though Spybot Search & Destroy does its best to safely remove everything, many spyware programs imbed themselves deeply in the operating system. Since every computer system is a little different, there is always a chance that there will be side effects of removing the nasty programs. Another reason for backing them up is that adware is often part of a program that you intentionally installed and needs to be there for the program to run. You can decide if you would prefer to live with the adware so that you can continue to run its supported software.

Spybot Search & Destroy also has a function called immunize. This will attempt to block most known spyware and adware from installing in the future. I would suggest using it so that you can keep your computer as free of spyware and adware as possible. It is also a good idea to set Spybot Search & Destroy to automatically check for updates when it loads and set it to load every time you start your computer.

While there are a number of products out there that will help you deal with adware and spyware, at this writing, I believe that Spybot Search & Destroy is the most effective and easiest to use entirely free solution. Even when compared to commercial products, Spybot Search & Destroy is at least the equal to the best of the bunch.

With a free solution that is as good as Spybot Search & Destroy, there is no reason to suffer with a computer system that is riddled with spyware and adware.

Update: If you have been running Spybot Search & Destroy for some time, be sure to upgrade to version 1.4. This version seems to have greatly improved the detection and cleaning capabilities. For a number of months prior to the release of version 1.4 it had seemed the Spybot Search & Destroy was falling behind some of the other available tools. However, with the new release I can happily continue to recommend this free product.

If you are running Windows XP, you may also want to consider the free Microsoft AntiSpyware beta software. At this writing it seems to be the most thorough antispyware tool (free or otherwise) available for Windows XP.