Has your Internet browser been running slower than normal? Or when you type in a website it sends you somewhere else completely? These are signs that your computer may have picked up some spyware.

Here are a few more telltale signs:

• Annoying pop up ads appear even after you've closed your browser
• Your Web browser's home page was automatically reset
• There are new additions to your toolbar - buttons or bars
• Connection to the Internet takes considerably more time than usual

If this sounds familiar, you're likely infected, but the good new is that a strong defense need not come at a price - some of the best tools are free!

Let's be clear: spyware is different from viruses. A virus is intended to initiate an action on your computer, while spyware is completely centered on your Internet browser. It is designed to gather information about you and your surfing habits and perhaps to even redirect you to different sites-and worse case, record your keystrokes - including passwords.

Today, most of the major virus scan products include some level of anti-spyware scanning but they aren't 100% effective because the list of threats is constantly expanding. In fact, in our group tests, our anti-spyware software picked up an extra 30-50 items per week that our fully paid versions did not.

Your best defense is to run both a virus protection software (like Microsoft Live OneCare or McAfee Security Center and periodically (as in once a week) run a secondary Anti-Spyware tool. Our favorite is Lavasoft's Ad-Aware � SE Personal Edition, which remains the top rated product for its ability to identify, isolate and remove the vast majority of spyware objects-and it's free.

Ad-Aware will scan every file on your computer, identify and quarantine it for you. It's as simply as hitting "Scan Now" and "Finish" - but if you want to know more, it also lists the files it found. It's a great tool and an easy fix for strange browser behavior.

You can run your anti-spyware any time your browser starts to bog down, but to keep your system running even better its best set a recurring reminder in your Outlook or contact manager to clean up your system. It's like giving your computer a day at the spa.

Regular maintenance should include (run in this order):

1. Virus protection software updates and scan
2. Anti-spyware scan
3. Disk Clean Up (free PC tool found from the start menu in All Programs then Accessories/System Tools/Disk Clean Up)
4. Disk Defragmenter (same as step 3 but choose Disk Defragmenter - keep in mind that this could take quite a while so it's best to close all programs and run this one overnight.)

We'll cover "Systems Tools" and what they can do to help your PC in an upcoming blog

Contributed by Michele Routh Combs, Pinnacle Quest Consulting.