Just a quick note to those who do decide to install adware and spyware removers and tune-up utilities- be careful how many you install and how you go about installing them, because as strange as it may seem, pretty soon, they can become more annoying, and frustrating, than the adware and spyware you originally intended them to get rid of!

Just from my position alone, as an example- I noticed a system slowdown and a few pop-ups, so I googled a few of these adware and spyware removal tools, and a few tune-up utilities. In the end, my computer had no less than SEVEN spyware removal apps, all detecting different spyware and adware (rather disappointingly "limewire" is full of spyware called "bearshare"), and no less than FOUR tune-up utilities!

Now imagine trying to keep control of all these apps as they modify system settings, try to load at start-up, etc, all for your "convenience" of course, slowing your system, taking up space on your hard disk, all issues they're "supposed" to resolve... Uninstalling these apps then can be just as much a pain, as some of them have no restore function, and some leave behind registry entries, etc.

In summary, they say ignorance is bliss, and somewhow, after downloading all these various apps, to try and speed up my system and rid myself of spyware, I tend to agree, because its not too often I'll pull a 24hr shift on my comp unless I'm doing a fresh install, and then even that takes less time!

By the way, and some users may wanna kill me for saying this, because I dont wanna be giving novice users ideas, but its for the same reason that I steer clear of antivirus software- al the updates in the world wont help you when your system is infected because as we all know- any antivirus app is only as good as the last virus it detected.

Guys, last thing to sum up- If you want a clean system, DIY- follow Nighthawks basic solutions, and be vigilant, and dont get swallowed up in hype about the numerous amount of internet threats out there, because there's far more beneficial reasons to be on the internet than not to be...

Pretty sweet Nighthawk, but if you'll forgive me generally ranting on, lol, my post was aimed at the more average user, such as myself, with a P4, 256mb ram and a pretty miserable 30gb hard drive, so now you can understand why I'm so conscious of space and system resources... :-)

Ah, I'm not really bothered that much, but if I got desperate enough then I'd probably go for this memory:

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=122445&cks=CMS

and this hard drive:

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=301945&cks=PRL

It's even better now. Great stuff!

Thank you so much for your guide!
-Jack

Given the thread bump - just thought I would chip in to suggest a possible reference adding for Windows Defender per front page news, although perhaps you prefer to wait until it moves along from Beta 2....

Then again you may want to add a "catch all" paragraph about keeping up to date and joining a forum and looking out for Betas and latest releases .... though many programs have auto updaters and installers now that semi-automate this at least.

wow, you revived a year old thread and the Op is still around!! Impressive!

The guide is good, but personally I reccommend O&O's Pro edition defrag program over perfect disk, as I have found that it gives you more options to keep your disk in shape and has a faster defrag performance overall on week-to-week defrags (especially if you use their SPACE option).

The main website link is for this is:

http://www.oo-software.com/en/products/oodefrag/

This is a free internet so I reccommend trying both products to see which you prefer.

The rest of the software list is reccommended, especially Adaware and CCleaner which I use frequently.