No thanks to my sister’s penchant for “trying out” software and visiting some interesting websites (using Internet Explorer, no less), my dad’s Windows XP PC was becoming more and more sluggish with each passing day. More frustratingly, a few pop-up ads would appear as soon as Internet Explorer was launched, marring the surfing experience.

Now, I’ve managed to switch my dad to the superior Mozilla Firefox (and he didn’t even notice it, thanks to an Internet Explorer skin for Firefox), so he’s been experiencing tabbed browsing and doesn’t suffer from pop-up ads and the like. But that doesn’t do anything about the adware/spyware-infested state of my dad’s PC. So what could I do?

A recommendation at an online forum led me to Spybot Search & Destroy. It scanned my dad’s PC and found all sorts of stuff which were removed in minutes! Now my dad’s PC is significantly faster (as fast as an AMD Duron running Windows XP ought to be, anyhow)!

So all that’s left is to convince my sister to start using Mozilla Firefox, and to stop experimenting with interesting-looking software…