slowing down and spyware
My aging '07 iMac has slowed down noticeably over the last few days. Shutdown takes almost 30 secs whereas it used to be near-instant until recently. Start-up times have increased as well.
General responsiveness seems a notch below average, but that may be suggestion.
I ran the trial version of MacScan which told me there are two instances of spyware on my machine, but it does not tell me whether it removed/quarantined them.
Are these things related? Could anybody point me towards the solution?
PS I checked Activity Monitor just after boot-up, but it might as well be Chinese for me. One thing I did notice is that there's a WesternDigital Drive Manager active, even though no WD drive is connected and I uninstalled the software a while back (because it really sucks). How can I make sure stuff does not remain on my system after I have ostensibly removed it?
All advice is welcome. Thanks in advance.
General responsiveness seems a notch below average, but that may be suggestion.
I ran the trial version of MacScan which told me there are two instances of spyware on my machine, but it does not tell me whether it removed/quarantined them.
Are these things related? Could anybody point me towards the solution?
PS I checked Activity Monitor just after boot-up, but it might as well be Chinese for me. One thing I did notice is that there's a WesternDigital Drive Manager active, even though no WD drive is connected and I uninstalled the software a while back (because it really sucks). How can I make sure stuff does not remain on my system after I have ostensibly removed it?
All advice is welcome. Thanks in advance.
Comments
As far as slowing down is concerned - ever run Disk Warrior ? If not, get a copy and use it regularly. I used to run it once a month when I was editing on a full time basis.
Other utilities such as CockTail, Speed Tools, OnyX etc can also be very useful. Just depends on how much you like to point and click :-) - others will chime with their favorites.
As far as the WD Manager is concerned, I'm not sure but it's likely that it's an invisible app addon which starts on boot (like the bloody stooopid Adobe Application Manager in CS5). Get Easy Find http://easyfind.en.softonic.com/mac click the Invisibles radio button and track the sucker down and destroy it with great glee !
cheers