Spybot: Search & Destroy is just as handy as AdAware. Not as pretty, perhaps, but it's a nifty little program that will find things that AdAware leaves behind. (And conversely, AdAware finds things that Spybot doesn't, this is why we run them both)

To begin, open Spybot. The main page has quite a few options, but we're going to ignore most of them. Click on 'Search for updates'. Let it do its thing for a bit, and when it is done, check every last update that it displays and then click the button up top entitled 'Download updates'. IF for some odd reason you get an error then you can select a different server to download from. Simply click the middle button between 'Search for updates' and 'Download updates', select any server that strikes your fancy, and then click 'Download updates' again.

After it finishes, then we're ready to scan. On the left hand side of Spybot click on the icon that says 'Search & Destroy'. Immediately after that, click 'Check for problems'. Spybot's search is generally much faster than Ad-Aware's, and I believe that's because Spybot doesn't actually do a full scan, but rather searches the registry and scans the files that it references.

Once the scan is complete, Spybot will automatically select most things for you. For users of the eBay toolbar, it will make an entry for it, but won't select it automatically. In most cases, just let it select everything and then click the 'Fix selected problems' button.

It will ask you next if you want to remove the selected items, click yes. Spybot will then create a restore point for you automatically (quite the handy little feature) and then remove the items that were checked. It may want to run on startup to remove any files that were in use. Go ahead and let it.

If the auto-update doesn't work, often because malware will block the connection to the update servers, you can download the update from Spybot's website directly. Save it somewhere you'll remember how to get to (the desktop or whatnot) and when it's downloaded, all you have to do is run the file. It'll do all of the updating for you.