Windows XP Tune up Video #3
Now we are going to look at Adware and Spyware. We are going to show you a couple of utilities that are free for use. The utilities, when you use the free versions, they do not provide support for the products so you will not be able to use their support options.
The first utility we are going to look at is Ad-Aware, which deals with Spyware and Adware. So we are going to connect to the internet or if you have cable or DSL mode, you can go ahead and just select the Internet Explorer icon to launch your internet. We are going to switch our address to www.download.com and then either select enter or Go.
Once on the download.com home page, of course it’s still loading here so give me just a moment. There is a section on this page called Most Popular and the way you would access that by scrolling down and of course I need to scroll with the right little ways and here you have your Most Popular Downloads. Of course, we see the Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition here. We are going to go ahead and select that entry. Once on the Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition page, go ahead and select Download Now. Okay and we’re going to select Save. Choose your Save-in location line as the desktop. If you need to alter that information, save it to your particular folder, you can use the dropdown menu to choose a separate drive or a folder or we’re going to select Save.
Okay the download is complete so now we’re going to go ahead and minimize or close the Internet Explorer Window. We see our installer here on our desktop. You can choose a different location, be sure to browse to that location and we’re going to double left click the installer to start the install process. It says the publisher can not be verified, be sure you want to learn the software. I’m going to go ahead and select Run. Okay and here we’re at the Welcome screen and we’re going to go ahead and will close any other programs we have running to ensure the proper installation and we’ll select next. Be sure to read and agree to the license agreement because I’m sure you will not install unless you do agree and select next.
Here is the Destination folder. I’m going to leave it as default. If you do not have enough room on your current hard drive, you can use the Browse option to choose a different drive and folder location and then select next.
I am going to choose anyone who uses this computer because this is a very handy utility and I would like for all the users on the computer to go ahead and have an access to it so I will select that option and select next. And it says you are now ready to install. I will select next again.
Okay, here you have a couple of options, Open Help File. I’m going to go ahead and deselect that entry. I will leave perform a full system Scan now and Update definition file now and then select Finish. This is going to go ahead and connect to make sure you have the latest definition file for identifying spyware. And now it’s staring to scan. This can take a little while so I’m going to go ahead and pause the video until that process completes.
One other thing I wanted to know was that, you can watch the scan here, it will show you the objects recognized, whether it’s a process, a module, a registry key or value or a file of folder identified. Typically when registry entries are located, it will require a restart in order to remove those entries because the Windows Registry is only read on star dot as well sometimes if a file can not be removed, Ad-aware will notify you and ask you if it can run upon startup to have exclusive access to the drive. You can tell it yes and the next time you restart, it will perform a scan where the exclusive access which makes it able to go ahead and delete those entries.
Okay, now the scan has completed. I do the scan pretty rarely. So if you will notice, I only have two critical objects. To review these objects, you can select critical objects and see what type they are, which these appeared to be tracking cookies. I am going to go ahead and right click the first open select box and choose select all objects. Of course, that is a lot of handy when you have more than two so I just wanted to show you that option. Then I am going to go ahead and select next and those have been cleaned.
On the main page, you can see the definition file which includes date that the definition file was loaded. You can review details about that definition file including the date that it was created on which was the fifth month, 24th day of 2005. They have dated those definitions about once a month.
Okay, we’re going to go ahead and close that program. Now we’re going to look at Antivirus, a free utility so go ahead and reconnect to the Internet or if you use cable or DSL modems and place select your Internet Explorer icon. I’m going to maximize this.
Okay, you will need to go to www.google.com as you see I am already here and I have that as my default page and in this search box, we’re going to need to type AVG Free Antivirus. Then we’re going to select Google search. We’ll go ahead and select Google search.
Okay, on the first entry is AVG Free Advisor, Free Antivirus Software and it’s at Free.Grisoft.com. That is the company name that produces that particular title. So I am going to go ahead and select that. Here we are at the AVG Antivirus Free. We’ll go ahead and select that entry.
Okay, once on the next page, we’re going to go ahead and scroll down and as you note here, you do not get technical support or updates but that does not include virus definition files, you do get those. We’ll go ahead and select the download free version. At the top of the next pages you here, AVG free for Windows installation files. We’re going to go ahead and click on the avg71free. Once again we’re going to select save. Choose your save in location.
Once again, my default is where I choose to download those things to. So we’re going to go ahead and select save and once you have chosen to download location. I’m going to go ahead and pause this once again and while this downloads just to save time. Okay, my download has completed.
Once again, I’m going to ahead and close the Internet Explorer Window. Here on my desktop, I see the AVG installer. I’m going to invoke the installation process by double left clicking. You could see here with “publish your name” and I am going to go ahead and select ‘yes, I want to run this file.’
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