I spent some time fixing my mom's Windows PC last week at my parents' home.

There wasn't any hardware problem. Instead, it was another bout with spyware.

A few weeks back, my mom called to tell me her computer was giving error message after error message about corrupt icons upon start-up. It seemed like everything on her PC was corrupt.

Sure enough, the errors were there for me when I sat down.

I clicked OK in the error box 20 or 30 times and then just moved the error box out of the way. There was also a Live Antispy "evaluation" that was "scanning" her system and asking her to buy the full version.

I hit the control-alt-delete key combination to bring up the list of running processes and ended the Live Antispy scan because I could not quit it from the desktop.

I had purchased Spyware Doctor for her system last year and knew that the Live Antispy was not something that should be there.

A Spyware Doctor scan identified the Live Antispy as malware, and I manually removed it with directions I found through Google.

The Spyware Doctor scan also found half a dozen other malware items to delete.

After doing the repair, I rebooted and ran the scan again to make sure things didn't show back up.

Mom asked me what I had done to fix the PC.

Truth be told, it wasn't much. I simply recognized that the error boxes that were blocking her screen could be moved to the side and the rest of the PC was still addressable.

Leaving the error on the bottom of the screen and then initiating the spyware scan really fixed most of the problems.

The rogue Live Antispy process had to be forced to quit using the task manager (control-alt-delete) and manually removed.

If you don't have a lot of computer troubleshooting experience, I can see how the symptoms would indicate a catastrophe.

Stay calm and take a look at what's going on. See if you can still function despite the problem and try to get the spyware scanner to do its thing.

Force-quit any item you're not familiar with and search the Web for the verbiage on any error messages or anti-spyware you find on your system that wasn't installed by you.

Jim Rossman is technical manager of Macintosh support for A.H. Belo Corporation.

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