Adaware sucks...
Among the freeware, Spybot catches way more.
If you are willing to pay, XSoftspy has an excellent program for cleaning the shit out, then a handy piece of freeware called Spyware blaster will monitor incoming shit and filter out most spyware. I also use a good free firewall, Zonealarm, and I have it set that I have to confirm just about everything before it can access the Internet. My log of Zonealarm rejected contact attempts numbers in the thousands. If I turn the log on, the number of rejected attempts will increase by 10 or 20 in the time it takes me to peruse the review boards and my emails.
When I installed XSoftspy after using Spybot for at least a year, it found out that somebody had hijacked my browser address. I was momentarily going through an intermediate site before being routed to Google, my homepage. Very tricky indeed!
Now I'm free of Spyware, I think, even though my pesky kids get on my computer fairly often.
Shaw Secure tried to get me to delete my Norton antivirus software because the two systems are "incompatible" - not friggen' likely, mates - I kicked that Shaw Secure right out the window. If their kids can't write a program that will work with Norton, then they don't know what the fuck they are doing!