Hi Kris. What's the difference between spyware and a virus?

Randy, I have absolutely No Idea! But was taking writer's license when posting for me friend! hehe

From the Friendly-Neighborhood-Professional-Geek
Spyware, by definition, is a subversive program which monitors behavior, or collects personal data. The problem that Rae is probably having is that the Spyware is eating up computer resources, or causing a slowness in the reading/writing to her harddrive. (Common effect from Spyware) Alternatively, Spyware will also present spamvertisements directly to your computer screen, or redirect you to spamvertizement websites instead of the one you typed into the browser window.
Spyware is different from a virus, as a Virus will actually attack something, and then want to spred to infect someone else, resulting in dataloss, or computer failure.
Technically, a "Cookie" is spyware.
Usually, spyware is software designed with marketing purposes in mind (either way, I dislike it)

If you are concerned about Spyware on your PC, I suggest installing a free anti-spyware software called Ad-Aware (you can find it on Google). Also to prevent getting spyware installed on your PC from various websites, especially ones with lots of banner ads) try browsing with Mozilla Firefox (mozilla.org) instead of Internet Exporer.

But now I'm having a difficult time purging the song by Glass Tiger out of my head.

Don't forget me when I'm gone...
My heart would break...
I have love you for so long...
it's all I can take.

Jeremy- whew! I was hoping to run into you here. We can't seem to open anything up! Saturday, I was on-line and left the room to answer the door. I came downstairs about 20 minutes later and I think our four y/o got on and clicked yes to every little pop-up that came on the screen. I found "Your Daily Horoscope" and numerous other trash icons on the desktop and something was attempting to install (with an icon on the toolbar). I quickly got off-line and rebooted. Since then, Windows is asking for the product code, which we don't have as we purchased a computer that was already loaded with Windows 98 (no grief over that ;) so we have no idea how to access the code so that we can get the desktop to open, so that we can get on-line (dial-up and no grief over that one either), so that we can download spybot and get ride of whatever is causing the problem.

Any ideas, J?

Sorry about the song (*snicker*) I told Kris to title the post that because it seemed so appropriate :D

I sented you a WIN98 Product Code to your GMail account. (Hopefully you have access to it via Kria)

My guess is that the registy was edited and your Windows installation was affected (so it wants to confim your install code)

I'll start poking around online to see if there is anything else related to that behavior you are noticing.

That Jeremy is a smart cookie. Bad pun intended. Thanks for the tutorial. I have Ad-aware and will run it right now. I hope Rae can get things all worked out.

Wow Jeremy, you are the computer man! After reading your post, I have concluded that I must have some spyware on my comp also as I have noticed it has been extremely sloooooow lately! Thanks for being a "professional geek"! I will have to do what you suggested also.

If Ad Aware doesn't do the trick, you should also try SpyBot Search and Destroy. Very effective at eliminating and protecting against future issues with spyware.

King of Fools,
I've actually never used Spybot (though I've heard about it from many another geek) and I don't recommend software to people when I don't use it myself.

*Downloading a copy now to play with*

I've heard of some issues which Ad-Aware does not fix (though I've never gotten them - then again, I'm relentless when it comes to my computers and their security)

Ahem- needing kudos here for mentioning Spybot first.... ;) (Kindly review comments :D)

Although, I do thank KOF for bringing it to the neighborhood-geek's attention :)

Spybot was prescribed by Amy's husband, our family's computer doc and the resident tech geek of a Christian Camp in Arizona, Mr. Gilby (Prescott, AZ, that is).

Randy,
I'm only a cookie if I can be an Oreo Cookie

Those are the bestest.

Yep, Rae, I just recently went through the same thing on my home computer. I had 218 "potentially" dangerous files. Yikes! So I got a software as suggested above. Now I have that running in the background. Has helped greatly.

Kris,
See, Geeks can be heroes too!

All my favorite heros are geeks. There is no comparison. :D

Rae, I'd wondered where you were. Good grief! (Actually, bad grief, I suppose. Hmmm. . .have to reconsider that phrase now.)

Hi Cindy...good to see you in Rae-ville. And Jeremy...if you want to be an Oreo...that's just interesting to ponder. ::: life as an Oreo :::

Randy- your artistic mind continually amazes me ("Life as an Oreo"). :D

Also am liking the sound of Raeville....