Being bombarded now

[Mawby]

Further to earlier question, I`m just being bombarded now every time I try to do anything on here, does that mean I`ve got to use my Toshiba Product Recovery Disc and will I lose all my family pictures??

[vehelpfulguy]

First, you will not need to use your recovery disk, it is probably just one small program causing the problem which we may be able to help you remove.

Secondly, you should make sure your family pictures are already backed up to CD or DVD, or at least on an external hard drive.

Having your family pictures just on a sinlge hard disk is VERY risky as a hard disk can crash, or your PC or laptop could be stolen and you will lose all of them.

GET INTO THE HABIT OF BACKING UP IMPORTANT FILES TO CD OR DVD.

more.......

[vehelpfulguy]

You need to try to ferret out your naughty program.

First, you should make sure you have an up to date anti-virus program installed (if not already) and run that anti virus program.

It probably ISN'T a virus but do that first to make sure.

Secondly, you should make sure you have a Firewall installed.

If you have some sort of security package it may have a firewall already.

Windows does come with a basic firewall. The one in Vista is OK, the one in XP is not.

If you are running Vista make sure the Windows Firewall is turned on (open the Windows Security Centre to check).

Now the firewall should ask you every time a program tries to contact the interent, and you can say yes or no.

more....

[vehelpfulguy]

The program that is causing this is called "spyware" and there are some programs out there that will try to find spyware and remove it.

One is called Spybot Search and Destroy. Download it from here:

http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

Install and run that.

Another is Adaware. You can download the free version from here:

http://lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php

Again, install and run it.

Hopefully one or other of these programs will find your spyware

[vehelpfulguy]

Your problem may also be caused by an add-on program to Internet Explorer.

To see if that is the case, download another browser, say Firefox.

Run Firefox and if the problems stop then it is a spyware program linked to Internet Explorer. If that turns out to be the case, come back to us and we will tell you how to remove spyware from IE.

Get Firefox from here

http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox/

[Mawby]

Thank you very much so far, it says "more" how do I get more please?

[Mawby]

Thank you very much, vehelpfulguy, I`ve printed out your answers, in four sections, and ends how you will tell me how to remove spyware from IE, so will leave it for tomorrow when I`ll be a bit fresher, I hope!!

[vehelpfulguy]

>Thank you very much so far, it says "more" how do I get >more please?

Sorry, I just added "more" at the end of each append to show I was going to add more text in my next append.

[Mawby]

Thank you very much, offending Spyware has gone after Steps 1 and 2. now keep losing my Internet connection but that`s a different problem so thanks again, I might have to ask another question soon!!