04-03-2004, 03:05 PM
Quote:Originally posted by lols
Thanks for the advice! Another piece of advice that might be of interest some anti spyware software can cause problems.
We ran anti spyware on our pc last night and it kept on coming up with a problem about msn messenger. What was really weird was that we don't have msn installed on this machine. Luckily we found the cause and have sorted it out but anti spyware software is generally good but it can cause other irritating problems.
lols, i had a similar problem with a dialer that was on my pc which there is NO way I installed. I was baffled and after investigation, i found that what happens is sometimes when you download something that looks pretty normal to you, there are in fact all sorts of other badies included. I dont know about you, but when i downloaded things, i never really read the agreements properly. Sometimes you think you are only installing one thing, but different companies work in cahoots and the files you dont want are actually written into the thing you want to install. I had something that actually tried to uninstall my broadband modem so that this dialer could dial up instead of the broadband modem. I took a snaoshot of my start up registry and got someone to look at it. They found this dialer there and unless you are very clued up, it is very easy for stuff to slip by you.
another thing I found out is that some spyware may actually prevent you from running spyware scans. It is smart enough to detect efforts to detect it, and stop them. I have managed to get my pc completely spyware free, but it took the best part of 2 days. I now have a spyware preventer which warns you that the product you are installing contains spyware.
In part two of the article there are different step by step tips on how to sort the problem out and how to prevent it.