Question hi.
i am not very computer literate. just know enough to get by, check e-mail, etc.
i am wondering if my kids have screwed up the computer somehow. it was running very fine and quick, and all of a sudden (after a long day of neopets, kenopets, etc., now that school's out!) i have pop-ups all over the place and it is slower than a snail! also, someone downloaded some stupid toolbar, and every two seconds i have to click to remove it and even if i click "lock toolbars" after removing it, it still comes back.
i have gone through all my documents and erased unneccesary ones. i have gone through all programs through control panel and removed the ones i think the kids may have added.
i have run disc cleanup and disc defragmenter and restarted the computer and still am having no luck.
is there something else you know that i could do, or maybe a particular program or something to look for that could be causing this problem?
thank you so much for any help you can give!
Answer Malware (viruses, spyware, adware, etc.) has been very much in the news lately. These are pieces of code that can harm your PC in various ways. A PC (especially one used by kids) needs to have protection (anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewall) to survive these days.
There are many programs in these categories, some of them free. You don't say what version of Windows you have, so I can't make some full recommendations, but I would search for AdAware or Spybot, AVG and Zone Alarm to help clean and protect your machine.
