my friend was using her computer 2 days ago when a lot of messages started popping out they all said that there was spyware on her computer. she was trying to print something out but her computer would just keep freezing we restarted her computer over 20 times and every time it would just freeze.her computer knows it has spyware but i don't know how to get rid of it. it tells you that if you want to get rid of it you have to follow a certain number of steps and when it gives me a list of things that i should delete it then tells me that i have to purchase an ati spyware. unforunately they have a budget of $0 at this time to fix the problem and i just wanted to know if there is such a thing as a FREE anti spyware anti virus protection. please help. every single day that passes by keeps on slowing down her computer.

and can anybody please explain to me what exactly is spyware and how do you get it.

A google search for "spyware" will give hours of reading on this problem.

Some free tools

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx

http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

http://www.download.com/Spybot-Search-Destroy/3000-8022-10289035.html

Also, here are some free utilities that work very well. Don't let them sell you something, everything you need is free.

http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/lng/us/tpl/v5

http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/company/products/znalm/freeDownload.jsp?dc=12bms&ctry=US&lang=en&lid=staticcomp_za



Mike

i like to use spybot search and destroy, to help keep them out, use the zonealarm firewall from zonelabs. spyware is just that, spys on what you do, some's good but most is bad, some types will give pop-ups others will let in viruses. to battle viruses, grisofts avg antivirus is a good one.... all these tools are free.

thankyou for all the help but i still have a big problem. i start the computer and it is very very slow but atleast it is still moving and when it has finished starting and i am looking at my desk top i go ahead and press start and then i press any thing else microsoft word, paint, or what ever it is, it never open and the weird thing is that if i try pressing start for a second time the buttom will stay pressed and nothing ever happens. i can't open anything in my desktop and i can not get on the internet. sometimes as soon as i restart and restart my computer it freezes. i can't go to any of those websites to get any of those antispyware because the computer just doesn't let me do anything at all.
does that mean that the computer is broken and it will never be fixed
please help

does that mean that the computer is broken and it will never be fixed
please help

I'm sure your computer can be helped at this point.

What version of Windows are you running? XP Home.....Pro?...98?

If you have XP, the thing to do is to boot into safe mode enabling network support.

See "Description of Safe Boot Options" in the middle of the page.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315222

If you have 98 it would be nice to see if you can boot into safe mode.

See this page http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2001052409420406