The Spyware Tale of Woe A little while ago I saw that iMesh had a new version out. I had been evaluating it and, not thinking clearly, I clicked on the update. Unfortunately, I forgot that I had actually been evaluating iMesh Lite, the spyware-free version, before I performed the update to the "full" version. Within minutes a pop-up ad interrupted my computing -- I wasn't even using my browser when it happened! Ad-Aware told me that Gator had embedded itself, plus other nasty things. I told Ad-Aware to remove the offending Spyware, and it did. Everything was fine until I restarted my machine. Upon entering Windows again I was informed by my instant messenging client that I needed Winsock 2 in order to run it. WTF? I investigated and found that my winsock32.dll was still in place. For the life of me I couldn't start any Internet programs. Finally I used the life-saving System Restore utility in Windows XP. Luckily it had made a restore point earlier in the day, unfortunately after iMesh was installed, but fortunately before Ad-Aware did its removal. The restore was a success, and I could access the 'net again. Thinking that perhaps the problem was a fluke, I again followed the procedure of removing the nasty Spyware from my computer. Again my Internet access was killed upon restart. After another restore I started looking for answers from friends. One suggested Spybot - Search & Destroy. I downloaded it and ran it. Within a minute it found the problem: the Spyware had embedded a nasty piece of code into my network card driver -- by removing the Spyware I disabled my network card! Spybot repaired the driver and then removed the rest of iMesh's nastiness. And there you have it! Trusted Ad-Aware, who charge money for the full version of their product, couldn't hack it. Spybot, which is completely free (well, except the author would appreciate a donation), now has my complete confidence. It even has a memory-resident module that keeps Spyware programs from installing themselves in the first place.