I have a friend who’s p.c. is in critical condition!! It’s being devoured by ad/spyware bugs and I sure is probably overrun with viruses and Trojans. I went over to start first aid, but I gotta tell you I got nowhere, he has AOL and after 15 agonizing minutes I was able to finally reach www.download.com, via Explorer. My plan was to summon the aid of Ad-aware and Spybot, however when I clicked on the downloads I got no response!! The forces of evil seemed to be blocking my efforts. What is the very first step toward recovering a p.c. this far gone? Should I have emptied the file cache first? Can you guys please give me a general outline of a good procedure to follow??!!!
For someone with such a mess with malware and probably virus infection, going on-line isn’t recommended. Why not take a CD with a bunch of useful utilities, which you can download or use copies that you have recently (these will be more up to date). avast! (boot scan if OS allows), AdAware, Spybot S&D, HiJackThis, Eddy’s HJT Analyser, these would be a good start.