Ok, basically my computer is in a bad way.
Once it is booted up I generally have about 5 minutes before it is totally unresponsive to anything I do.
I think this is due to very poor protection against viruses and spyware.

So basically I want to know the best way of "starting from scratch" basically clearing the decks and starting again (with some serious virus protection etc.)

any advice gratefully received!

Hi Yoda,

Why not reformat the HD and reinstall the OS !?

The "Recovery" CD will be around in your documentation somewhere, or it may be on a partition.
Put all the installation files of everything you want to keep on a CDRW saves downloading everything again. And remember to pop all your docs onto floppy or CDRW.

And pop Spybot-Search and Destroy on and Ad-Aware and a firewall.

Alex

I would install these programs (You may need to use a friends pc if you can not stay on line long enough).

AVG anti virus, free edition. www.grisoft.com
Sygate firewall, free. www.sygate.com
AD-AWARE/Spybot search and destroy/ spyware blaster. www.majorgeeks.com

ALL of the above programs are available at either majorgeeks or at www.download.com

Once you have installed them, you need to update them straight away and then run them all. Get rid of anything they find. I know some of them say to be carefull about what you delete but if you run spybot first it will create a restore point for you, and i have never had any problems after deleteing everything they find.
After doing this you should be pretty clear, although i would delete my cookies and temp internet files just to be on the safe side!.

Hey Yoda,

You may find that any Anti Virus programme will already be compromised as many actively kill any instalations after they successfully install..

If you're using a FAT32 or FAT formatted drive then it is possible to do a scan to check for a virus using F-PROT and a win98 boot disk on a CD.. that'll avoid the installation killers.. As I've offered before if anyone wants a CD burning with this setup then there's a small charge (to cover the CD cost) but I can sort it for you...

Whilst it's easy to blame virii, you could try clearing your cache, removing extraneous programs and defragging your hard drive as those may be contributing factors to the problem...

Hope that helps.

Originally posted by amhudson119
The "Recovery" CD will be around in your documentation somewhere, or it may be on a partition.

Unless you bought it from Time or Tiny, then it will cost you £60 for the CD!