I've had Vista for a few years.

But just in the last few months when I boot her up
I get a white on black screen telling me Vista
is scanning my system for spyware.

It then takes aaaages to scan everything and eventually after about 20 minutes (and after some nervous sweating on my part) it gives me the usual Vista login screen.

Not sure if this is some evil plot by MicroSoft to make me upgrade to Windows 7 (or buy an iMac).

This happened to anyone else?
Any easy fix?

No there is no plot. I think your computer is infected with a virus

I'll agree with that.

Have you installed any "useful tools" recently?

A few. But nothing obviously dodgy.

Might have to reinstall Vista or maybe bite the
bullet and upgrade to Windows 7.
I've heard W7 is a much better OS (not a high bar admittedly).

Trouble is they are not obviously dodgy any more.

Antivirus 2010 for example. It looks perfectly legit. It even finds a few "threats" which it then offers to "fix" for the small price of $39.99.

There are several "Registry Cleaners", "Driver Updaters" and "Spyware Killers" that look and act like the genuine articles.
One particular P2P file stealing "tool" installs a covert file sharing network that adds hidden and password protected folders on the users hard drive (usually full of German pr0n videos).

So you never know exactly what you are getting.

Oh and Windows 7 is streets ahead of Vista.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

Oh and Windows 7 is streets ahead of Vista.

I second that. Win7 is absolutely wonderful compared to Vista. Quite honestly, it's the best client version OS Microsoft has released so far.

Is it easy to upgrade from Vista to W7?
How long does it usually take?

Originally Posted by TWD

Is it easy to upgrade from Vista to W7?
How long does it usually take?

The reason I installed was a hard disk failure, so I needed to reinstall Windows. I figured it was a perfect time to try Win7 and am glad I did.

I've heard others say it took them about an hour or so to upgrade and it was pretty painless. There are some older programs that won't run on Win7, so make sure all your software is compatible or you can live without it.

Win7 is a memory hog though, so if you don't have at least a couple gigabytes, don't waste your time.

Originally Posted by TWD

Is it easy to upgrade from Vista to W7?

Very

Originally Posted by TWD

How long does it usually take?

Depends on the machine, but the ones I've done have been 30 - 45 minutes.

More if you run a full system restore backup first.

Try run some anti virus surely its affected also try the suggestion of chrishist by full system restore.

It boots up with the message:

"Antispyware Boot Time Cleaner"
"A boot time spyware scan and clean has been scheduled"

I have AVG and CounterSpy installed so I'm not sure
if the message is generated by either of them or
by Vista itself.
Seems like Vista as it all happens before getting to the login screen.

Counterspy is the culprit for that. Are you running Ver2 or Ver3 ?

It is only supposed to run the boot scan if the "normal" scan found something suspect though.

CounterSpy V2

I don't use CounterSpy personally but have come across it on other peoples machines.

It maybe that you will have to clear the results log so it doesn't "think" their are any "locked" files.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

I don't use CounterSpy personally but have come across it on other peoples machines.

It maybe that you will have to clear the results log so it doesn't "think" their are any "locked" files.

Thanks a lot. Will look into that as soon as I get time.

Hi Friend,
You must scan the processes which the virus is presently running. If you do not it will keep reproducing the files for ever.

Thanks,
James