-----Original Message-----
Has anyone done a side-by-side 'real world' comparison
of the effectiveness of the Microsoft AntiSpyware product
against Lavasoft's Ad-Aware, Webroot's SpySweeper,
and/or Spybot Search & Destroy?
MSAS (free-beta) & SpySweeper (30 day trial) are very effective and each
finds slightly different things and both are needed to clean badly infected
systems, as well as a good antivirus program.
Adaware (free) and SpyBot 1.3 (free) are basically useless if the first two
are being used.
I have also recently tried Yahoo AntiSpy, Spy Subtract, ZoneLab's Online
Scan, Bazooka, and HijackThis to see if I missed anything after cleaning
with MSAS and Spy Sweeper.
None of those added anything to the MSAS and SpySweeper combo. Granted you
have to be very careful with these two as false positives can reek havoc on
your machine's health although I had very little problems with FP. Google,
or MSN
), is your friend.
Removing spyware can leave your newly cleaned system unable to communicate
with the internet due to corrupted winsock2 and I have used LSPFIX in the
past successfully to solve that problem.
I clean systems for people all the time. Ad Aware, SpyBot, Spyware Blaster,
and SpywareGuard were all I needed to get the jobs done.
Until now.
I will continue to use MSAS and Spy Sweeper in conjunction with a free
antivirus, Avast, a free personal firewall, Zone Alarm, and JavaCool's
products SpywareBlaster and SpywareGuard.
Doug