If your computer is runing slowly for some unexplained reason, and you've tried scanning for and possibly removing viruses to no avail, you may be a victim of "spyware". Ad-Aware by Lavasoft removes malicious Adware, Spyware, Trojan horses, Trackers, Hijackers and Dialers. They provide a free version for personal use, as well as several levels of commercial solutions from small business to enterprise level.

Many traditional virus scanners, aside being not very effective at their own job, are particularly ill-suited to removing non-viral malicious software, also known as malware (are you having fun with all of these different classifications?). Ad-Aware is one of the legitimate answers to this problem. There are many more programs which are not only not terribly effective, but sometimes contain spyware themselves. Others merely rip off a legitimate program's spyware database and sell it as their own solution.

Ad-Aware is one of the pioneers, and we have used it extensively to remove malicious software from residential computers.

This is what Ad-Aware does:

• Scans fixed and removable drives, memory and registry
• Detects many known and some unknown variants of malware
• Removes aggressive spyware and malicious content
• Takes advantage of a fully featured quarantine support
• Logs information about scans and malicious content removals

We recommend that you run Ad-Aware's removal tools in conjunction with other Spyware and Virus removal tools. Sometimes a Windows installation will become so infested that several tools need to be run in succession, some of which are extremely specific. As always, before running any scan, update the program you are using so that it has the latest information to work with. Look for details on our other recommendations.