Computer Cleaning help?

**Cheyenne** · 07-18-2011 03:24 PM

My parents and I share a computer and it needs to be cleaned. I've asked a friend on what to do, and I used the website she gave me, and it put something on my computer. It's getting very hard to stay online for a while without a message popping up of "Windows Explorer has stopped working" or "Message Runtime", and shutting the webpage down. My mom says that my grandfather can do it, but I'm afraid if he does, he may find some personal things on here of mine and get me in trouble for it. And also becasue if he does it,he'll always be bringing it whenever he asks us for something.

So, is there a way to clean my computer without taking it somewhere? And it's any easy and virus free way to clean it? Please help!

**jns** · 07-18-2011 04:20 PM

Since I would want to keep what I had on the computer, I would buy an external drive of a size large enough to contain everything and then copy everything over using a bootable Linux CD such as PCLINUXOS found on distrowatch (download and burn it to a CD, then run it from the CD in memory - not on the hard drive). Then I would make a clean install using the recovery CD or DVD. Afterward I would put on an anti virus program (you may want to download the latest version before you start). Then I would set it up for the internet and would go through the update process until no more updates were required. Then I would load any programs that I liked.

**Seeker_Advice** · 07-20-2011 09:13 AM

For those of me (us) that aren't so techno savvy like my friend jns above, there are two programs that I have installed that seem to work pretty well for me. I repeat, I am not knowledgable in the area of anything electronic or technologically advanced, there are many in here who are, and I like to live by K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid).

So I installed "Spybot Search and Destroy" as one of my primary anti-virus software programs and then I went to Glary Utilities and down loaded their easy to use software. Both programs were free to download. Both offer "ease of effort" on how to use them (step by step, simple enough for a ten year old) and do a pretty good job I think (and have been told by many certified professionals).

Are they the "best"? Probably not. Are there better programs available for purchase by some of the big name software developers? Probably.
But for my concerns and yours, they should work pretty good.

Good Luck!