i was put onto spybot last year, what a difference from the main stream so called anti spyware programs. guess who is my main culprit for placing spyware on my machine. someone in the US based in washington, goes by the name of microsoft.
every two weeks my machine will start to go slow and strange things happen. once spybot has done it's thing up pops the name of the offender. MICROSOFT. they have their eyes on all of you ! No i don't go looking for smutty stuff either, only aircraft,ships and english tearooms.
I second that. Lavasoft's Adaware and Spybot work well as a combination and get rid of about 95% of the cr@p you'll ever get. For specific stuff that you cant get rid of, I usually jut do a google search and find some other soul with the same prob who's visited some geek forums and just follow the removal process or download whatever removal tool they suggest and so far thats solved all the problems I've ever encountered.