You just purchased a brand new computer. You turn it on and discover how wonderful it is. It runs super fast, going from one page to another. Your surfing really is much faster now. Life is wonderful.

Fast forward a few months. Your brand new computer doesn’t seem to be performing like it used to. It’s now running very slowly and your hard drive seems to be making a lot of noise.

What’s happened? There is a strong possibility that you have had some sort of spyware, adware, or malware installed on your computer. These unwanted programs can wreak havoc on your computer. Symptoms can vary. The number one symptom is that your computer is not nearly as fast as it used to be. Other symptoms can include the following: pop-ups are now appearing while you surf, strange icons appear on either your desktop or start up menu that you haven’t seen before, your browser gets replaced for another, your mouse cursor seems to float across the page while at rest, your computer locks up frequently, and displays a lot of error codes, and you start receiving a lot of spam in your email.