If you use you computer as much as I do (paying bills, doing research, surfing the internet, gaming, etc.) you may have noticed your computer or Laptop slowing down acting erratic or even crashing. Now this may or may not be anything serious, you may need a larger hard drive, additional memory or something else, or perhaps someone could be doing something to your machine unknowingly to you.
Have you ever been using your computer and a “pop up” message says that your computer is infected with a virus and you should restart your computer and every time you try to close the message it pops up again. This so called alarm could be fake and infecting your computer with spyware, malware and/or adware.
This happened to me one evening after I downloaded a file from a site I thought was safe. Upon the completion of the download, a message popped up stating that I should click on the ad to close the window and reboot my machine. The more I clicked the more pop ups would show and pretty soon my computer became slower than wet paint drying.
This is when I called my wife (you see she’s the actual computer geek or the one with the PC knowledge) anyway she tried to get it going and finally she said that she need to clean up the Registry.
Well she got a registry cleaner and removed some old files, adware and some malware.
Adware is a third category of product, though it’s often not considered a security risk. Adware is commercial software that delivers targeted advertising to your PC.
Malware is software that’s designed to do something bad to your system – delete or modify files, control your browser, modify your firewall, or make your system susceptible to remote control.
Well after she got that done, my Laptop was “old Speedy” again.