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Spybot Search & Destroy
Spybot S&D is an application that works well alongside Ad-Aware. The two complement each other well, and catch things that the other won't. Like Ad-Aware, Spybot S&D will take anywhere from 2 to 15 minutes to finish its scan. I'd suggest running a scan with SS&D about once a week. Spybot S&D
is already installed on your machine (if you don't have a shortcut,
go to start\allprograms\spybot s&d and you will see it.) But if
you're reading this at home and would like to download it for home use,
please go to
As with Ad-Aware, after launching Spybot S&D, go to the "Search for Updates" option.
Spybot will connect to the server...
If there are updates available, they'll display in the white pane area:
Go ahead and click (select) the update(s), and click "Download Updates."
Once the update is complete, click the "Immunize" button at the left pane. This will help protect you from recurrence of infections that Spybot S&D finds, so ideally the Spybot S&D scans will be finding less and less nasties!
In the example below, I had already immunized, so I got an "already blocked' message. If you get an "X amount of infections possible, please immunize" message, click the green cross next to the word "immunize" at the top:
Great! Now you're ready for the scan: Click the "Check for problems" button, and the display will start telling you what it's doing all the way at the bottom. Also note the button with two arrows facing inward at the right of the display: If you click that button,
...you will get an extra little display area at the right. This is going to be useful after the scan is complete.
A-ha! We're done! It looks like my wife went to the "Excite" site, one of the most notoriously invasive web-based information and mail sites! Hmmm... We'll have to have another discussion about that! ;-) Note that when I highlight the infection, I get an explanation of what the infection is, on the right pane.
So now check the box next to the infection (if it doesn't get checked automatically), click the "Fix selected problems" button, and you get a confirmation, of the "are you sure" type.
Go ahead and say "yes", problem(s) fixed!
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