Wordaen, Keeper of the Banstick wrote:
I use Ad-Aware, Spy-bot, MalwareBytes Anti-Malware and HijackThis! for spyware related stuff.
I've had real good luck with MalwareBytes including just tonight when the wife managed to to infect the spare crappy computer with some of that malware that pretends to be a virus scanner and...
it just found 50,000 issues and you need to pay $39.99 to remove them and did you just click "no thanks"? -- I don't think you realize that you have 75,000 known issues and we can remove them for only $39.99 and let us open an IE window for you to our website, in fact we'll do you the favor of making that your default webpage and we've also changed your wallpaper to a warning that you have 100,000 known issues on your computer and they can be fixed if you'll only pay the $39.99 to activate the full version of this scanner and here's the webpage to order it just like the pop-ups we're putting on your computer right now say because you wouldn't want to have 125,000 known issues on your computer and...
...anyway, MalwareBytes cleaned it all right up. The version I just downloaded onto the computer was up to date with the latest definitions and it can be run offline.
HijackThis! is a good utility but it really requires a little knowledge and isn't for casual "fire & forget" scanning like the other three. I wouldn't put it on the computer of someone who didn't know what they were doing.