Record for removing spyware, adware

sjgmoney

Senior member
Apr 28, 2004
219
0
0
Classic case of computer overload as his younger sister installed just about every file-sharing, adware, spyware program known to man. I think the final count when I ran Adaware and Spybot was removing about 10,000 files. He had some of the most stubborn ad programs I've ever seen, try to go on the internet and 50 pop-ups would start springing up. It was like an orgy of rabbits!!!!!

Just kept running adaware and spybot over and over, finally got rid of all but one, and that one I was able to deactivate on msconfig. Brutal.
 

Polishwonder74

Senior member
Dec 23, 2002
474
0
0
My latest all-time high was about 4,500 scanned with Ad-Aware SE. It was an SU Law Professor's daughter's machine. It actually took me over 5 hours to get it running. 2 XP Recoveries, 2 rollbacks, 5 scans and one MONSTER headache. TOTAL NIGHTMARE.
 

sjgmoney

Senior member
Apr 28, 2004
219
0
0
Wow, look at all those stupid toobars!!!! "Your viewing screen has now been reduced to 1 square inch, please enjoy" Guess I was a tleast lucky I didn't have to do any XP re-installs etc, just kept running the sweeps over and over. Great programs.
 

KoolDrew

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
10,226
7
81
I get about 10 objects when I search ith adaware.lol and there all tracking cookies ussually.
 

skyking

Lifer
Nov 21, 2001
22,774
5,935
146
I and another nerdly friend of mine were driving a longhaul truck trip. We ended up in Jackson, NC. at a "truck stop", which was really a gravel lot, some sanicans, and an all night adult bookstore and convenience store.
We went in there, and lo and behold, there was an HP and a cable connection you could rent by the hour.
The clerk said it was all messed up and his boss had told him it was broken.
We convinced him we could fix it, if we could then use it. We managed to download the usual tools and get it fixed up in a couple of hours. We had been without broadband for two weeks, and were having withdrawals:p
 

talyn00

Golden Member
Oct 18, 2003
1,666
0
0
dang most ive ever seen is in the thousands, and it was so bad i just reimaged the machine.
 

phonemonkey

Senior member
Feb 2, 2003
806
0
0
At some point, you have to decide if it would be better to just wipe the machine and start over versus taking hours to try to repair a machine that's gotten so bogged down with spyware.

Personally, if I came across a machine that was that bad, I'd try to take what info I could from it and reimage it. Not much survives a good reformatting/repartitioning ;)