You need to listen to the early warning signs that your computer gives you and then take action.  The first thing you need to do is realize that you have a problem.  Now that you have conceded that you have a problem, you have to analyze what the problem is, when it occurs, what you were doing at the time and what you have to do to get out of the problem.  You need to get out a piece of paper and make notes of these items in detail so that when you get to the point of trying to fix the problem, you will have the information to do so.

The first step is to analyze what exactly the problem is.  Are you getting a blue screen or a General Protection Fault?  Does the error message reference the name of a file or program that is causing the problem?  On a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death), there will be a specific error message and usually a file that has caused an error in another file and then a number.  Most of the Blue Screen errors are related to hardware that is on your system.  It could be related to the software that runs the hardware but it will usually go back to being hardware.  This means that most of the bad programs that you can download off the Internet or viruses that infect your system will usually not give you a Blue Screen.

General protection faults or general protection errors occur when a program tries to access a space in memory or RAM that has not been designated for it to use.  The operating system then shuts the program down and shows you the error message to tell you what has happened.  If you click on the details button within the error box, you can usually get a little more information about the name of the program that is causing the error.  You will tend to get these types of errors when you are browsing the Internet and have programs such as Hot Bar, SaveNow, New.Net or any number of the spyware programs that are out there.  Some of these programs are written so that they need to interact with your browser to do what the programmer wants.  If the program is poorly written, you can get errors that cause Internet Explorer to shut down.

Whenever you get one of these error messages you need to make a note of the name of the program as well as any other info that might help you.  This is your computer giving you a early warning sign that there are more problems to come.  Most of the errors are correctable by uninstalling the offending spyware program.  Take a look at the name of the program.  Search your hard drive for the file and look at the properties or location to find out what it belongs to and then search on Google to see if there is any reference to the error message that you are having.  Usually you will be able to find the exact error message in a matter of minutes and be able to correct the problem because someone else has had the problem and the solution is posted somewhere on the Internet.

You might find that the error message is not related to a spyware program at all.  Sometimes you will find that it is related to a virus that might have infected your system.  If you have been diligent about keeping up to date on your virus protection and your Windows updates, you probably will not have this type of problem.  If you have let your updates slide, your slacking could have allowed your system to become infected.  The longer that you let the problem go on the worse it is going to get.  If your system is infected with a virus, then while the virus is running, it is probably infecting all of the other programs that you use.

You can check for viruses that load from your startup folder by running the MSCONFIG program from the run line.  Take a look at each of the items that are listed in the Startup folder.  Track down each of the items to see if they are legitimate programs.  For example the different variants of the Klez virus will place a file in your startup folder with a name of wink with random characters for the remainder of the file name.  If you are using an NT version of Windows it will create a service with wink plus the random characters as the name.  The service is set up to start up automatically when you start Windows.

The longer you let the problem continue, the worse it is going to get.  If you catch it early and correct the problem you might be able to get by without a visit to the Byte doctor.  If you think that the problem will go away or fix itself, you are sadly mistaken.  The problem will usually take care of you before it fixes itself.  And do you really need any more heartache or stress in you life?