The Virus

Last week I started up the computer and noticed that the task bar had warning balloon telling me my computer was infected with a virus. What!! I exclaimed noting that I had not upgraded nortons anti virus or the virus definitions. However I do have the Microsoft firewall and update my patches on a daily basis. How could this happen I wondered. So I click on the balloon and it opened my browser to an anti spyware page that gave me loads of options for spyware remover. I downloaded one and after installation, the program ran and identified 135 errors with my computer. Wow I thought where did those come from. I tried to run the quarantine function and that took me to a payment page? A payment page? It didn't say this when I was installing the program. So I cancelled that as it looked really dubious and downloaded another spyware remover. This time I only had 121 errors but it also went to a payment page. That was when it occurred to me that I may not even have a virus but a spyware that pretends that I have one whilst doing some other stuff in the background. My suspicions were confirmed when I went online and realise that my browser had been hijacked and the antispyware software page was now my new homepage. I tried to change this manually without success. I remember I had downloaded some antispyware software from BT so I ran that and it found 20 errors. It deleted all 20 and I thought good thats it. But oh no my balloon soon came up again telling me I had a virus. I repeated the delete and after the fourth attempt decided that it definitely was not working. I hopped on the mircosoft security page and downloaded the ***NEW*** windows defender. I installed it and scanned the computer. Your computer is fine and working smoothly came the reply yet still I could still see the balloon and couldn't change my homepage. So much for microsoft security.
So I searched on line and came across spybot. Guaranteed to kill a website claimed; excellent for antispyware said another. So once again I downloaded and installed. Spybot didn't even find this spyware but found some others that it deleted. The only good news after this was I had removed some spyware and still had some but know I knew their names. After a day of searching and trolling through user forums I finally came across a posting of someone who had the same problem and installed a program called SuperAntiSpyware. Not another dud I thought but tried it anyways and it worked. It found 641 errors on the computer and deleted every single one. I now run this on a nearly daily basis and it still picks up one or two adware programs that sneaked their way into the computer.
So I would recommend SuperAntiSpyware for your needs and it is free... Still back that up with an Antivirus program and a firewall for ultimate security. And lastly keep virus definitions up todate...