How to keep your PC clean from Spyware

Most of us have heard of spyware by now, and most of us will have had some form of it on our computers at one time or another.  In fact, most people have a lot of it on their PC's and don't even know it.  If you are surfing the web and find your PC is slower than usual, or random popup's appear, or your PC starts taking longer to boot than usual or slower at doing normal tasks, using software or you just think something is not quite right, chances are you got spyware, and these are just the 'friendly' types.  I'm not going to discuss the in's and out's of spyware and all the different types, as that is beyond the scope of this article.  What I am going to do is advise you how to clean your PC of all this spyware and ensure it is kept clean going forward.

1. First thing to do is download 2 pieces of software to your PC and do a full clean of all spyware.  Get Ad-Aware (the free version is fine), and Spybot.  Once you have installed these and updated them to get the latest updates, run a full scan with both of them and remove all traces they find, then reboot your PC.
2. Next go into Spybot and run another scan and remove anything else it finds.
3. Then use the Immunize option in Spybot to ensure all your system files are protected.
4. Then turn on advanced options and ensure you have the 2 resident options ticked and turned on.  This is one of the most important steps!  This will ensure you have 2 very lightweight processes running in the background at all times.  They help to protect any further spyware getting on to your PC and also protect your system files.  Next time a dodgy piece of software or something you may have downloaded tries to access one of your system files to update it, these kick in and prompt you what is about to happen and ask you if you want to allow it or not.
5. There are further options in Spybot you can configure, such as preventing the homepage of your browser being changed, which some spam sites do.
6. Check out the other features too, such as going through and cleaning up what processes run on startup on your machine, as you may find something dodgy lurking here too!