My Windows PC started to act strangely after using it for only a few weeks. A lot of pop-ups and pop-unders started appearing on my desktop without my permission. My PC started slowing down it almost felt like walking in mud.  This got me worried so I asked some of my techie friends, “how to make my computer faster?” They always answer that to make my computer run faster I have to learn how to get rid of adware. So I ask them, “how do I get rid of adware?”

“And what the heck does removing adware had to do on how to make my PC faster?” I was such a newbie to computers back then that I don’t even know how to make my computer faster. So eventually, one of my techie friends showed me some articles about viruses, spyware, and adware. “Okay,” I told him. “I know all about adware, now. But how do I get rid of adware in my Windows machine?”

He advised me that it was not easy to remove adware because you need a lot of time and commitment. Exasperated, I yelled at him, “So how do I remove adware in my PC?” My friend shrugged and wrote on my notebook some tips and tricks that he sued to get rid of spyware and adware.

Here are some of his tips and tricks:

1. You can boot into safe mode and disable any weird or unfamiliar start-up programs from your Windows install.

2. When you press control-alt-delete you can view the programs and background processes in your Windows PC. Look at the processes and determine if there are weird or unfamiliar processes running in the background. You can have one of your techie friends to look at the processes running in Windows. You have to disable, remove and prevent the identified suspicious program from starting up with Windows. See step one to prevent suspicious programs from starting up.

3. Inspect your registry and remove any suspicious items in there. Warning! I do not recommend a newbie to hack the registry. Registry hacks can really damage your Windows install beyond repair.

Now here is the real secret. Windows users who are new or long time users use this secret.

4. Use registry scanners and anti-malware scanners to completely remove adware from your system. Do a full scan of your hard drive using a scanner.

If somehow your Windows won’t allow you to install anti-spyware, don’t worry, this is the adware working to block scanners from your system. What you need to do is use a USB pen drive and put in a portable version of the registry and adware scanners. Make sure that your jump drive is virus free and spyware free.

Using the USB drive, do a full scan of your Windows machine. Hopefully, the first scan will detect all the adware infection in your PC. After the first full scan, reboot your PC and do a quick scan just to make sure you are really adware free.

Even if we are just a bunch of PC newbies, we can still protect ourselves from adware and make our computer run faster. It’s not just the techie people who can monopolize security. There are tools out there that can level the playing field for the newbies and the technological elite.

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