I use Adware from Lavasoft and Spyware Doctor ($). I found you need both - neither doesn’t fully clean. Run daily...
Also get a copy of CCleaner (free). It’ll get rid of excess files and clean up your registry. Make sure you check the cookies you want to keep (like the FR).
Also install Windows Defender from the Msoft site. Not sure if it really does much but hell it’s free and runs in the background.
I believe Adware has real time protection - but that at an additional cost.
I have the CCleaner but there are too many things I can do wrong with it if I check or uncheck the wrong thing on it.(we computer illiterates are easily intimidated by such programs)
I sure hope it's changed since the original incarnation called Microsoft Antispyware. I beta tested that when it originally was going to come out and while software wise it seemed fine administration was questionable.
Several well known spy/ad/malware outfits dropped some cash or something and got M$ to flag them as low risk so that Antispyware just ignored them by default.
You could go in and change the settings on them on a manual scan, but the next autoupdate from M$ would change your settings back to low-risk/ignore on those companies ads.
In short I do not trust M$'s version of anti-spyware software to even bother downloading a new incarnation.