Before you can attempt to remove spyware from your computer, you should clean up unwanted junk off of your machine. The first thing you need to do is remove any unwanted programs or programs you no longer use. Even though you do not use these programs, they are still using up your system's resources. Getting rid of these programs will help speed up your computer.

Follow up:

Go to Start > Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs

Browse through the list and find programs you do not need or no longer use. After you find these programs, choose the delete option and the program will be removed from your computer. You may see programs that you did not install or toolbars that you did not want. These can be spyware and it is good to delete them now. After you uninstall these programs, you might be prompted to restart your computer. Restart and then proceed to the next step.

You will want to check your hard drive space for files you no longer need. A good way to check your hard drive space is open up my computer and right-click on the C: drive. This will show you how much used and free space you have. Go through your files and delete the files you do not need. If there are large files that you do need, you can always transfer them over to an external drive for storage. After your computer is cleaned of old files, it is time to defrag your computer.

When you write files to your hard drive, your computer rights them in whatever free space is available. Over time, this can cause your hard drive to work harder, because the read write/head has to move back and forth to find the files. When you defrag your computer, you are putting all of these files together, so your hard drive can find them faster.

Go to Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter

Once you get here, you will click on defragment. This will analyze your hard drive and show you how fragmented your hard drive is. (Note: You will need at least 15% free disk space to properly defragment your hard drive.)

The red bars are the areas that are fragmented. Once you defragment the drive, you should see all or most of these disappear.

Now you are done with basic computer maintenance. Now it is time to look at different spyware removal techniques.