Detect and Remove Spyware

Cleaning the registry has become an important part of computer maintenance these days. This is because the newer operating systems, Windows XT and Vista, very easily become corrupted. Also, though corruption could be a problem with earlier operating systems such as Windows 98, it was not nearly as big a problem as it is in today’s huge operating systems.

Registry files are huge and complex. Some of these files tell each command a computer operation is carrying out where it will find its next needed file. You can think of these files as pointers.

The Trouble Created By Registry Corruption

In a very simplified sense, registry corruption is nothing more than pointers that leads to either the wrong place or no place at all. With the older smaller operating systems the amount of time it took to carry out a few false operations was negligible.

Because Windows XP and Vista are so large, false pointers waste a lot of the computer’s time and resources doing operations that are in no way helpful. Such operations need to be repeated again and again until the right pointer has shown the operating system the correct path. Of course, this will make the computer appear to be operating slowly.

So you can see, the overall effect registry corruption has on a computer is that is slows down its operations. Sometimes this slow down will not be too noticeable. However, it is possible for registry corruption to slow the computer to the point it makes it difficult to use the computer at all. Registry corruption also makes a computer prone to errors and even the blue screen of death.

Viruses and Spyware

Spyware and viruses steal part or sometimes most of a computer’s resources. So, just like registry corruption, these things will make a computer slow down and have frequent errors. You can see that simply knowing a computer isn’t working well doesn’t tell you what is wrong. It could mean the computer has spyware, viruses, registry corruption or all of the above.

Though your computer has many more resources than just the CPU, opening up your task manager and looking at your CPU history will give you a very good idea how much of your computer’s resources are being used at any one time. Sometimes it is possible the CPU will be at 100 percent usage when the computer is just sitting idly. This could happen because spyware was using all your CPU power to do its misdeeds.

Even if spyware was using 80 percent of your computers resources and your computer needed to do an operation, such as connect to a web site which would require 40 percent of your CPU’s strength, your computer would react by slowing down very noticeably.

To summarize, spyware and/or viruses will make your computer slow and prone to errors and crashes. However, a corrupted registry will make a computer act in the same way.

For optimum computer performance, you must not only keep your computer free of spyware and viruses, you must also keep it free of registry corruption. Doing so will keep your computer speed like it was when it was new and it will keep crashes to a minimum.

Tags: Adware