Spybot Search and Destroy Tutorial

Double click on the Spybot Search & Destroy icon to start the program.

Spybot may display a legal information screen before loading the program. If it does, simply click “Ok” to dismiss the dialogue box and start using the program. If this is the first time you are using Spybot, the Spybot wizard window will appear. For the purposes of this tutorial, we will not do anything with this wizard, so you can click “Next” three times, then click the button labeled “Start using this program”.

The first step is to update Spybot’s definitions files. To do this make sure you are connected to the Internet, and then click on “Search for Updates”.

Spybot will contact the update server on the internet, and if there are any program updates available, it will list them as shown below. In this case, you would want to put a check in all of the boxes to let Spybot know you want to download these updates.

Then you need to tell Spybot where you want to download the updates from. Toward the top of the window, click on the words “Safer Networking #1 (Europe), and in the dropdown list, choose a site that is from the USA. This will make downloading the updates go much faster, especially over a dialup connection. Once you have done this, click the button to the right that says “Download Updates”.

Once all of the updates have been downloaded, click on the “Search & Destroy” button on the left side of the screen, and then click “Check for problems” to start scanning your computer for spyware.

The scan may take some time, depending on the speed of your computer and the size of your hard drive, and on the amount of spyware that is found. When it is completed, click on the “Fix selected problems” button to remove all spyware found on your system. Spybot will ask you if you are sure you want to remove the selected items, click “Yes” to do so.

Once you have done this, you may close the program by clicking the X in the upper right corner.

Based on: Spybot Search & Destroy, Version 1.3