Spyware and Adware

Worth a second or third scan to pick up stragglers

Thanks Pompa, just downloaded both programmes. I ran Malwarebytes and it only found 2 objects, so I was happy with that! Slimcleaner found a raft of unnecessary files (I told it to leave my frequently used sites alone re logins, so hopefully that'll be OK). I never log out of sites that I use every day, just leave all the tabs open...
Right, now to download the same stuff on DH's laptop.
About 18 months ago I bought an iMac desk top computer because I do a lot of photography and the graphics are so much better. Also, though, Apple doesn't seem to be anything like as vulnerable security-wise as MS, so now we only ever do our banking, online purchasing etc on the iMac.

I believe there are equivalent applications for the Mac, will see a MAC engineer tonight, will ask him.

IMO, apart from cleaning out trash, you should clean the registry (a cluttered registry slows everything down) and clear all your cookies.

Jane10, I have just tried installing Slimcleaner onto windows8.1, do not get any messages regarding problems with the certificate. Check that you are downloading from the site I stated and try again. I would not worry if you still get the same message and you are on an earlier version of windows.

The computer clock being wrong can sometimes be the cause certificate errors, especially if the year or month is not set correctly.

Update

Rang bank and they advised changing user name and password which I have done while using my netbook.

Rang Levono today and spoke to the most arrogant person who clearly knew I did not understand anything about Spyware and Malware.
His reaction was I would need to provide more information if I expected the company to look into this.
He informed me that some machines were pre installed with a program called Super Fish but their website had given details for uninstalling this piece of software if a customer didn't want it.
I insisted he e-mail me giving details which I could pass onto my son as I had know idea what this was.

My son rang to say he already knew about this and that he removed Super Fish when I first bought the computer last year.

He has cleaned it to some extent using all the software available and additionally manually deleted other software which still remained, but he says it is still not clean because some software is intrinsically installed into the fabric of the machine.
He's trying is best but thinks the only solution is to rebuild at a later stage when he as the time.

I have not used the machine since the day I had it delivered and am now very nervous about even using the computer again.

Because I have never had these type of problems before I knew immediately something was wrong. The banking website didn't look right to start with but I just thought I had made an error.

Does anyone know if there is a consumer organization who will help me take this company to task.

Until this happened to me I never realised probably naively that companies could be so underhanded,does anyone really know what is installed on their machine when they buy them probably not.

I have only ever bought Dell and HP. They do both install a lot of software that I don't want, I just delete it. However none of this is malware or spyware. The nearest to spy ware are the error reporting applications that I am happy to accept. Levano is not a company that has ever appealed to me, there machines are cheap and I think you get what you pay for in life.

I am surprised that if your problem is spyware/malware that malwarebytes does not remove it. Hope your son gets time to re-install your operating system soon.

Thanks pompa, I've done the malware one on my very slow, sticky computer and it's made it much faster. It removed about 20 unwanted thingies!
Off to do the other one now or and for you.

Thanks pompa. It is Windows 7 that I have on my PC. Is it really ok to download Slimcleaner ?

Yes. Mrs. P has both MB and SC on her win7 laptop.

The software for mac I have been recommended is AdWareMedic, I have no experience of it, so check it out first.

I'm pleased that most of you have seen positive improvements. Another thing worth doing every few months is a full defrag, but this is a job to run overnight, it can take hours. After a while files get fragmented across the disc and it takes the PC longer to pull all the individual bits together, so a defrag may speed things up more. If your drive is more than 70% full defraging becomes more important. If your drive is 70% or more full you should look at backing off large files like photos etc to improve performance. I like to keep my drives at 30% or less (25% full atm) I use the cloud for photos etc. At 30% I rarely need to defrag.

Wow! Just done the Slimcleaner and it's made a huge difference. My computer is like a spring chicken now and I was almost ready to chuck it out!

Shame they don't have a Slimcleaner for Grans

pompa!

I wonder how many PC's get replaced simply because they need a good poo. if you are still running the original operating system and software, there is no reason why a PC should slow down significantly. The primary reasons will be a build up of rubbish in the registry and on hard drive plus having a hard drive over 70% full, 30% much better. With so much free cloud storage available it is easy to remove photos etc.

I can liken it to being asked to find a specific page in a book, pretty quick to do. Now take a hundred books and tear out all the pages and mix them up, now try to find a specific page !!!! This is what your PC has to do every time it tries to find a file in an over full, fragmented system, and it has to find hundreds of files each time you press a key.

Give them a chance, and a good poo.

The thing that seems to slow down mine is old emails. I do try to delete ones without anything worth keeping, but every so often I have to have a spring clean and dlete all those that have sneaked past me. Then I empty the "deleted" file on Thunderbird to finally get rid of the deleted ones.

I keep my email on the web so it does not take up any resource on my PC, also means I can pick it up from any PC.
Try MB & SC, you may be surprised how it speeds things up.

Deleting files does not get rid of them, it just hides them, like sweeping dirt under the carpet, you can't see it but it's still there. That is how file recovery systems work. Slimcleaner will free up that space.

update

I received the statement of the Malware infection and have sent it to Levono for their comments.

I'd be interested to see that.

I notice SlimCleaner has a function to optimize SSDs (Solid State Drives) if a computer has one. I'm not certain if that part of the program should be used. Windows itself has a TRIM function for optimising SSDs. If SlimCleaner is allowed to do the job, Windows might have a different take on what it considers optimised and then undo what SlimCleaner has done.

It's reckoned that the life of an SSD's can be shortened by the writes/rewrites that occur during use. It could happen that between SlimCleaner doing its job and then Windows doing the same, data is being perhaps unnecessarily moved/re-written, so decreasing the life span of the SSD. There is a school of thought that says a solid state drive shouldn't be defragged for that reason.

Also, SSDs work differently and defragging them doesn't benefit the system or speed it up. They are so fast in operation compared to spinning disks (HDDs), that perhaps any difference optimizing did make wouldn't be noticeable.

Only a thought about that part of the program anyway, just in case someone's computer has an SSD in it (mine has). It probably wouldn't apply to most Windows computers but newer ones might come with SSDs in them, or could do in the near future.

Rider, interesting about ssd's (not that I have one). SW uses the standard windows defrag so perhaps it invokes the windows tool. Worth checking.
From what I read, I agree with you, don't defrag ssd as it shortens their lives.