"Personally, I use Spybot S & D"
I recommend going into Spybots advanced mode and seeing what is available. This program is a lot more than what is defaulted on. Be careful changing things if you have no idea what they are controlling. It will also remove much of Bill Gates tracking s/w in advanced mode, they are called usage tracks under "FileSets"
I also HIGHLY recommend turning ON "Tea Timer" when you install it. The Tea Timer function is a mostly silent registry change monitor. If a program tries to change the registry, the Spybot "Resident" (Tea Timer for a strange reason) will ask you if this change is allowed or click the "?" for more informations about the request. I suspect it can save your bacon at times.
The TeaTimer is the 4th selection on the install wizard and is defaulted off. It can also be turned on/off in the advanced mode under Advanced/Tools/SystemStartUp/TeaTimer by checking the box. This function also allows you control of programs that run at StartUp.
There is a lot more than meets the eye in this program, most of it good from what I can tell.
Yup, lots of really cool stuff that Spybot does, and you're right, as with all powerful tools, they will give you all the rope you need to hang yourself with! Same with HijackThis... Heck, I used to program in C, back in the "first edition" days of the K&R white book... Way before any C compiler had any silly stuff like "array boundery checking." It was fun to try writing something to the 100th element of a 10 element array, just to see what would happen! lol
Mark