I recently purchased a brand-new laptop computer. One of the first things that you have to do when you get a new laptop computer or any computer for that matter is get all of your old software installed and set up on your new computer.

That takes a lot of time and on occasion you might miss something.

About a month ago I miss something very vital. I forgot to install Spy Sweeper on my new laptop. That was a critical mistake.

Initially, I had rushed to install all of the software that I was using that day and you don't always think about the software that runs in the background or on a scheduled basis that can literally keep you in business.

About three weeks ago, my luck ran out and my computer seized up with a very peculiar problem. Spyware had infected my computer and it crashed but not in the typical way.

I kept getting errors on many different applications. Whenever I receive these errors, I would get a pop up window to send the information about the error to Microsoft.

Now, I like to help development along and hopefully help Microsoft make a better mousetrap so I won't curse at them so much.

So, I hit send. It appeared that the message would transmit successfully to Microsoft, but it got Stuck! ...

This was strange because usually these error reporting things work pretty smoothly. To make matters worse it locked up the rest of the computer and I couldn't do anything else with the computer.

I had to perform a hard boot on the computer and start all over again with the errors popping back up.

Restore it?  - Not so fast 

So I thought to myself, I would simply restore the computer to an earlier date when it didn't have a problem.

If only it had been that easy!

The same spyware that had screwed up my computer, also screwed up the restore program on my computer. I couldn't run the restore program! 

Uh Oh, Time to Panic, almost. 

Again the window to send an error message to Microsoft popped up, and if I clicked it, everything locked up.

The Fix

Long story short, I eventually learned that I couldn't hit send and I was eventually able to restore the computer install a spy sweeper program and get my machine cleaned up.

The bad thing about this is that I lost a good half day at work fooling around chasing after spyware and the stupid errors.

I was lucky. I was just reading the other day about a substitute school teacher that was convicted for showing pornography to minors. Experts did not learn that her laptop had been infected with spyware until after she had been convicted.

This nasty spyware program took over her computer at the worst possible moment and made hundreds of pop up porn web images show up on her computer in front of her classroom of seventh grade students.

Her conviction was eventually overturned, but she lost four years of her life fighting the legal battles and almost went to prison for 40 years. I was lucky I only lost six hours!

Now if I had been smart enough to install Spy Sweeper on my computer as the first program that went on, I wouldn't have lost six hours. If that substitute teacher had installed the program, she wouldn't have lost four years and a lot of money.

It's just like taking your vitamins, you need to defend your computer system just like you would defend your body trying to keep it healthy and running smoothly. Spy Sweeper basically does that for you. It's not an antivirus program it's an anti-spyware program. Unfortunately  spyware and virus program sometimes go hand in hand and sometimes spyware programs fill up your machine with so much junk that it just doesn't run anymore.

Not to mention, spyware can often provide hackers and criminal types information that you don't want them to have about you, your family, your business or your job or your work or your products or dozen other things.

All of this can be solved with a simple $20 program, Spy Sweeper.  Don't make the mistake I made and wait to long or take it for granted.