Ok, you should already have Spybot downloaded and installed. If not, you can download Spybot Search and Destroy here. They even have a nice quick tutorial to tell you how to download and install the program if you need it. I don’t want to reinvent the wheel here. The spybot tutorial will also walk you through your first time run of the program as well as a few other details. So it may be beneficial to review the tutorial. The Spybot tutorial is here. When you have Spybot installed and ran it for the first time, come back here and I’ll show you how to configure it for optimal performance and protection.

Let’s start by opening Spybot Search and Destroy. You should have an icon on your desktop. Otherwise look for it in your start menu. When the program is open, click on Mode at the top and select Advanced Mode. Click Yes on the warning that pops up. Don’t worry, it’s not overly advanced. Once you selected advanced you should notice the left side of the window now has more options for Settings and Tools. We want to go to Tools so go ahead and click on it.

Now the Tools menu should be displayed. To the right in the main window there are several choices. Go ahead and select them all. As you select them you will notice the Tools menu growing. I will take you down the line for the most important to this little guide.

Select Resident from the Tools menu. You have two option that are probably selected. These are the defaults when you install Spybot. Leave them both selected. If you have one or the other not selected, then go ahead and click on the one without the check mark in the box. The Tea Timer will actually let you know if a program or script is attempting to make any changes giving you the chance to say yes, no or always allow. If you don’t know what it’s telling you then be safe and say no. That is the safest answer until you get used to things.

Now lets go to ActiveX and look for any with a red marker. These are either known bad activex scripts or a corrupted one. Click on it to highlight it and then click remove. You will want to check here everytime you run Spybot and remove any bad activex controls. Next is BHOs. Treat this the same way as ActiveX, remove the bad and return here when you run Spybot.

Next we move to IE Tweaks. You should have the first option selected by default. Leave it be and select the next option to lock your start page so it can’t be changed by spyware and other malicious scripts. If you want further protection you can select to lock the IE control panel so users can not change your start page either. You also have the option to customize the IE window title if you want. You could say IE Protected by Mom and Dad.

Now go to Host File. This will put a know list of bad sites with malicious code in to your local host file and set it so you can not get to these sites. If you visit a site on this list or malicious code tries to redirect you to one of these sites, it just won’t go there because the local host file is telling IE that the site is actually located on your computer which is isn’t. So it can never open a site that isn’t there. So go ahead and click the green plus symbol at the top to Add Spybot S&D Host List. Go back here and click to add the list every time you get a new update so you can keep this list updated.

That’s it for the optimal tweaks. Just remember to run the program weekly or monthly to keep you computer clean from most spyware and malware. Also, when you run it, be sure to check for updates often and run the Immunize function. In another post I will talk about automating most functions so it can do all the dirty work for you in the background.