Not a week goes by that we don't get called out to help a windows user or company of users who have lost control due to spyware/malware. Sometimes its really bad, other times its just a few spyware programs, perhaps a new toolbar or some new application that just mysteriously appeared one day.The effect is different every time but the cause is always the same, Internet Explorer 6. It's constantly compromised the basic security of your computers and your networks and with Microsofts trackrecord for fixing problems fast you need all the help you can get. This month alone (ok, half a month) there has been 6 critical exploits against it and over 150 and counting since April 18th 2001. Even swiss cheese has a finite number of holes.
Problem is people just don't know any better, nobody uses IE because it's standards compliant or that it's a better browser they use it cause IE was there when they first booted up that new computer so they don't bother looking any farther. That is why their data is at risk and their computer can become unusable because of it. Here is how you can take back control. Spyware is endemic right now, if your running IE 6 and your browsing the web, thanks to ActiveX and the bugs of IE you have probably got spyware. Your computer can get hacked just by visiting a website or clicking on a link in your email, Microsoft has made it that easy to get 0wned.
Sad part is its just as easy to prevent, start by NOT using IE, There are better alternatives that are also standards compliant. Download Firefox opera. Both are much better than IE and much more secure.
Now that you have a browser that won't drop your pants to your ankles at the drop of a hat you need to do something about all the spyware you have gotten while using IE. This isn't hard but its not as easy as installing and using another browser. There are two programs out there that are awesome for this and both have a free version. I would recommend running both of them as they each tend to miss a few spyware programs and so by running both your likely to get more of it off of your system.
Start by downloading Spybot and Ad-aware and run these, if you're not really computer savy do you self the favor of spending the time to read the tutorials for each.
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Another annoying problem is pop-ups, which essentially come in two flavors, those that are browser related and those that are part of a function that was built into Windows back in the 3.1 days. Using Firefox or Opera will allow you to control the web based pop-ups but they will not do anything to the pop-ups from messenger. To stop these is simple, go into control panel and and select administrative tools, from here select services.
Select Messenger, this is has nothing to do with Microsoft Messenger Instant Messenging. Select it and then click on startup type and select disabled, then stop the service. Now no more pop-ups, while we are in services though lets also take care of another issue that several virus's have exploited.
Remote Procedure Call(RPC) is what you are looking for and there is two of them one is just called Remote Procedure Call(RPC) and the other has locator tacked onto the end of it, we want the first one.
Select Remote Procedure Call(RPC) and select the tab labeled Recovery
from here we want to change the selections for First failure,
Second failure and Subsequent failures from "Restart the Computer" to "Restart the Service."
The last thing is to automate the updates, from inside of XP control panel select System and then select the Automatic Updates tab and make sure it is setup to not only download but install them on the schedule you setup. Get your anti-virus software to do auto-updating and you now have the tools to win the war and still run windows.