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In the last few years, spyware has become very sophisticated. The sick people who write this software, do so to steal information about you. They are out to get your social security number, passwords, banking information and more! Viruses are another concern and although they don’t spy on you they can get so deeply into your hard drive, only a reformat will make it usable again!

Today, it is not necessary to have both a virus scanner and a spyware scanner. In fact, when both programs are installed, the tend to get in each others way and slow down your computer’s operations. However, you should make sure you have an antivirus or spyware program installed that will take care of all the problematic spyware and viruses around today.

This article points out which viruses and spyware it is mandatory your spyware or virus cleaner is able to clean off your hard drive. Also, we’ll discuss what this awful stuff is capable of doing to a computer and even your financial well-being.

Spyware and Adware

The difference between spyware and adware is that adware wants information on you as a potential customer and spyware wants information about personal things no one should know except you. This information usually includes the likes of your banking information and passwords.

The word “malware”is a contraction of the words malicious and software. Some malware are viruses and others are types of spyware that are malicious. Some examples of malware are: trojans, keyloggers, browser hijackers, worms, phishing software, rootkits, and bots. You should be sure your spyware or virus remover is capable of getting rid of all of these.

Rootkits, worms and trojans are types of viruses. Keyloggers, browser hijackers, phishing ware and bots are types of spyware. It is spyware that is most times is interested in stealing your personal information.

Sometimes a virus and spyware will team up on a computer or worse, the computer owner. For instance, a worm will be attached to a rootkit. The rootkit is capable of working its way into your computer’s operating system and then the worm will unleash its terror on your computer.

What Spyware Leaves Behind

So, now we know we don’t need both spyware removers and antivirus programs installed on our computers. This leads us to believe we need a total one program to keep our computers running in tip top shape, but really there is one more piece of software we should have. When we remove spyware and/or viruses from our computers, we leave registry corruption in its wake. There are many other sources that create registry corruption, but this is one.

This means every computer should have a registry cleaner installed on it because when left alone, registry corruption will make your computer act a lot like some viruses and spyware make a computer act. This means the computer will lose speed and may crash frequently. A good registry scanner should be run once a month or so and after any malware has been removed.

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In today’s newer, larger operating systems, registry corruption is a very real problem. Because of this, the registry should be cleaned periodically. Some think registry cleaning is not a needed operation because in years past a PC’s performance never deteriorated due to registry corruption. However, registry corruption in Windows XP and Vista cause a significant drop-off in performance.

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.

Registry Corruption Causes Slowdowns

When pointers from no longer needed software still exist in the registry, they point to files an operation doesn’t need or worse yet, they point to a file that is no longer in the registry. This means an operation will be sent out looking for something that is useless for its completion. So, all an unneeded pointer does is waste time. These types of pointers are a form of registry corruption.

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.

Registry corruption can make a computer slow down so badly it can no longer be used. Of course, this would take a substantial amount of corruption, but it can and often does happen. Registry corruption can also cause the computer to crash and be error prone. Even the blue screen failure has often been the result of corruption in the registry.

Viruses, Spyware, Registry Corruption May All Look the Same, But…

Registry corruption may make a computer behave in a similar fashion to the way a computer operates when it is infected with spyware or a virus. Like registry corruption, spyware and viruses can also make a computer slow down and be error prone. However, where registry corruption makes the computer preform unnecessary operations, spyware and viruses steal the computer’s resources.

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.

If a lot of your computer’s resources were being used and you tried to get the computer to do any task, like open up your word processor, you would see your computer would open it very slowly, if it was able to do it at all.

To give a quick recap, we all need to keep our computers to be free of viruses and spyware. However, if this is all we do we still may have a computer that is slow and error prone and may crash on occasion. The reason a spyware free computer would behave like this is that it probably has a corrupt registry.

It is important, but not enough to keep your PC free of viruses and spyware. On occasion a computer’s registry needs to be scanned for and cleaned of corruption. Doing this will insure your computer will run without producing errors and it will always run at its peak speed.

Posted under Software