Virus Warning

Even for responsible computer users, it’s impossible to keep your computer completely free of spyware and other malicious files. To ring in the new year, we’ve compiled our list of favorite free tools to clean your computers running Windows. 

Hands down, the best antivirus and antispyware software around is AVG. If you’re running Windows, you should be using AVG. It checks downloads, software installs, URLs, and email, among other things. In addition to the free version, AVG has licensed version which includes several additional preventative and cleaning tools. Free AVG: http://free.avg.com/

CCleaner is a “system optimization” tool, designed to quickly and efficiently remove spyware and Internet browsing history files from your machine. It works fast — it usually only takes a few seconds to run.  (Windows only. Freeware.) http://www.ccleaner.com/

SUPERAntiSpyware also has free and licensed versions of its software available for download. This tool does what it says: it hunts down and removes spyware installed on your machine. Full scans require a bit of a patience, but it is worth the wait. http://www.superantispyware.com/

New to my arsenal of clean-up tools is IObit.com’s Advanced SystemCare. The software is designed to clean and maintain your computer by checking for spyware, examining and fixing registry files, and removing junk files. System scans are very fast — for one machine with a nearly-full 60 GB hard drive, it took only a few minutes to scan and repair everything. http://www.iobit.com/

Of course, downloading and installing the software isn’t enough — the hard part is taking time on a regular basis to run these programs. 

What other tools do you recommend? How often do you run these tools? How often do you back up your data?

This post is tagged computers, software, tools

This post was written by Abby Clobridge