Cleaning up

[Steph]

In trying to clean up some of the programs and files in
Add/Remove Programs, as well as other places, I find
things that I don't remember being on my computer when I
first bought it from Gateway, and I didn't put them on
myself. I am worried about deleting something that may
be important. On the other hand, I suspect that some
things are spyware and installed themselves while I was
surfing. Is there someplace I can go to find out where
certain programs or files come from and whether I really
need them? Or should I just post to a newsgroup like
this one with one item at a time? I am running out of
hard drive space and need to clean out the clutter.

I would appreciate any help I can get.

 

[sli]

In trying to clean up some of the programs and files in
Add/Remove Programs, as well as other places, I find
things that I don't remember being on my computer when I
first bought it from Gateway, and I didn't put them on
myself. I am worried about deleting something that may
be important. On the other hand, I suspect that some
things are spyware and installed themselves while I was
surfing. Is there someplace I can go to find out where
certain programs or files come from and whether I really
need them? Or should I just post to a newsgroup like
this one with one item at a time? I am running out of
hard drive space and need to clean out the clutter.

I would appreciate any help I can get.

Download, update, and run Ad-Aware, http://www.lavasoftusa.com/ and/or
Spybot S&D, http://www.safer-networking.org/ They will find spyware and
remove it for you.