Spring-clean

It being Spring in this part of the world, I've been attempting to spring-clean. My computer.

A while back I discovered that something was creating multiple pop-ups of the worst stuff you could imagine, much of which our SurfControl programme blocked, but quite a bit of which came through anyway. It was really, really irritating to have to constantly close windows and pop-ups when browsing, and it slowed down my "computer experience" considerably.

Talking to our computer guy, I found out it was likely a result of spyware, and not the fault of the pages I visited. So off I went on a mission to find this spyware and get rid of it!

One programme searched my hard-drive and found all sorts of things, but then directed me to websites to get rid of them. I ended up with 24 pages of "things to delete" in various directories and registries. What a mission!

Until yesterday. I downloaded a nifty little thing called Spybot Search & Destroy. The licence agreement alone was worth reading for it's humour! :) And once installed, it quickly scanned things, listed the nasties, and then deleted them one by one. Awesome! (The programme also has a blind-users feature, so has really been created for everyone)

I now have a little "resident" that will alert me to anything trying to install and request further action. Very, very cool. And nothing has popped up unexpectedly since.

I almost have this urge to send the creator of the programme a big box of chocolates! But all he asks for in his licence agreement is prayer for him and his special lady. So, prayer it is.