Computer Freezes

Speaking as a person who has been in the IT field for a good many years, spyware is a nemesis that makes your computer keep freezing up and usually takes a professional to fix. According to Lavasoft, there are an estimated 100 – 150 million computers that are being controlled by hackers at any given time. A lot of folks have a misperception that these vicious programs are being programmed by some computer guru. This is not the case. In most cases, there are huge networks of individuals working together to wreak havoc on users computers.

A person can have their computer loaded up with all of the latest antivirus software and spyware intrusion detection software, but this still does not stop many forms of spyware that can still slip past these barriers with ease. In most cases, a bad piece of spyware is downloaded onto a computer via a website that has been infected or has been programmed to install this software. You may be browsing a perfectly legitimate website, but if that website has been compromised in any way, your machine can become a victim of spyware.

On a personal note, one night about a month ago and I was looking over my wife’s shoulder as she was browsing the internet. She happened to go to one of the local newspapers websites and was reading some different news stories. All of a sudden, her computer started freezing up and a popup appeared saying something to the tone of ‘You Have Been Infected, Please Click to Remove’.  When you get a popup like this, you have a couple of different paths you can take:

• If you click the popup, you can almost guarantee that your machine will be infected and in most cases become almost unusable. This results in spending good money to have a professional fix it.
• In most cases, if you don’t click the popup, you won’t get infected if you do one of the two following steps:
  • Start Task Manager and end your internet browser program. This will immediately close your browser and should prevent any worms or trojans from infecting your computer.
  • Hold in the power button and shutdown your computer. Although not the best alternative, it could save you a ton of time and money. You really should never just hold in the power button and shut a computer down, but sometimes this really is the only or best option.

I would also recommend doing a System Restore after encountering any kind of vicious spyware attack. Even if you stopped your machine from being infected, it would still be a wise decision to go ahead and run a system restore to prevent future computer freezes. Also make sure to do a full Virus Scan on your machine.

Don’t let your computer become a victim of spyware. The key is to not only have great software to stop potential attacks, but to also be an educated on this subject and know what to do when these situations occur. In the end, you will be able to avoid having your computer keep freezing up.

Cheers.