Computer cleanup.

I've just inherited my parents old computer system which was replaced by this new Dell I'm on now. I plan on hooking it up in my bedroom so I dont have to use my housemate's anymore when at home. It's a pretty good computer from what I understand (i dont understand much when it comes to PC's), however I think it is infected with spyware plus it has loads of programs which are of no use to me and probably slowing it down. Do I need to get my friends guru out to clean it up or is this something that I can do ??

I'd just wipe it out and start from scratch(format)...put a windows system in that you like... install anti-virus and anti-spyware

My mom has my old computer and I have no idea what the heck she has done to the thing, but I am going over tomorrow night to see if I can't clean it up.....She has so much crap on there and never defrags or scan disks so the thing is always freezing and does other odd things and who knows how many viruses are on it since she let the anti-virus lapse..argghh!

Good luck with the "new" computer fo yours!
:buttrock:

Thanks Lily. It has XP on it right now which I like. I think it still has Win98 on it too. Sorry to sound so illiterate about this, but how exactly do you "wipe it out" ?? I tried to add some spyware software that is on here, but it kept giving me some permission error number. I wish it was as simple as taking the damn casing off and vaccuming out the thing... hehe.

Lily is right. Reformat the drive and load the O/S and programs you want!

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Originally Posted by Lily

I'd just wipe it out and start from scratch(format)...put a windows system in that you like... install anti-virus and anti-spyware

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agree.

this program gets rid of all the extra uneeded crap that accumulates on your pc and its free www.ccleaner.com

this is a good spyware remover https://www.download.com/3000-2144-10045910.html

run both before you wipe it out i bet you have hundreds of spyware programs and maybe thousands of left over pieces of crap both of which slow it down

Yea, it has a rediculous amount of programs and junk that my dad used for work, plus just a load of crap that I dont need. I just want a clean running system without a lot of frill. I might need to get a friend of mine to wipe it out because I dont know how to defragment or whatever it is to start over.

if it is a dell or other name brand chances are it came with a restore cd with that restore cd it will format the drive and reload the whole OS for you.. it is very simple... I.E if you can get your hands on the restore cd

I dont think it is one of these big name brand systems, but I'll have to check into that, thanks.

Personally, if there is nothing on it you need I would pay some techy to format the whole drive and reinstall a newer version of XP Home Edition. Formatting the drive will erase everything. You can do it yourself but it's better to have someone do it for you so it's done right. To do it yourself you will need a copy of XP and a cd rom to reinstall. It shouldn't cost bery much to have someone do it or at least walk you through the process.

I need to do that to my wife's pc.

Once up, I recommend this anti-spyware program: https://www.ewido.net/en/

It's free and it found about 50 infected files that my other programs would not find. I use system Suite for my anti-virus. Many virus creators insert special verbage into their viruses so that McAfee and Norton don't see them. I had Norton and it would say no virsus. I deleted the whoel thing and installed System Suite and it found like 20 something viruses that Norton could not find, or could not recognize as virsus. My techy guy uses it too and says it finds more viruses than McAfee or Norton in his experience too.

I'm using Webroot as my anti-virus and spam protection, its supposed to be good. Thanks for all the info so far guys, I'll let ya know what I end up doing.