I get major lag in COD2.

[wtcnbrwndo4u]

Yeah I know. I just used that site. They didn't give any info for those three.

I currently use Ad-Aware. Good, bad?

[wtcnbrwndo4u]

Wow. I didn't know Ad-Aware wasn't running. Damn. The defintions are 50+ days old. Damnit. There's my fault. No active scanning.

[Tyreal]

Active scanning really isn't necessary. Just run the program every week or month and you'll be fine. Go and get Spybot S&D as well, I personally like spybot more.

[polobunny]

Originally Posted by Tyreal

Active scanning really isn't necessary. Just run the program every week or month and you'll be fine. Go and get Spybot S&D as well, I personally like spybot more.

Yep, agree. I don't like having programs running in the background if they're not offering me enough functionality. I scan my system every once in a while with a few programs, use Firefox with the Adblock extension and have good surfing habits so i'm pretty clean.
I wouldn't recommend only one antispyware scanner. You're better running a suite composed of a few scanners to get rid of everything instead.
I usually clean spyware infected Windows XP PCs this way (those days);

Boot into normal mode if possible, then install
1) AVG Free Edition
2) Ewido Security Suite
3) Windows Defender
4) Spybot Search and Destroy
5) HijackThis!

I reboot in safe mode and scan in the same order I installed those applications. I like to run AVG Free Edition to be sure the system is not infected with virus, it might not be the most powerful antivirus but the scanner is fast.
Ewido Security Suite is the big cheese here, it catches alot but really alot of spywares. Windows Defender will catch a few registry entries left, same for Spybot Search and Destroy. I like to install Spybot Search and Destroy Internet Explorer protection for my clients (called SD Helper), as it will block potentially dangerous ActiveX from being installed. You wouldn't know how much people click yes before even reading... Occasionally I will install TeaTimer, an active scanner bundled with Spybot Search and Destroy which takes little to no ressources. HijackThis! is great, it gives a good look on your system. You can quickly remove unwanted services or processes that run at startup and installed ActiveX aswell. A great tool that has a nice place on my "perfect computer tech" usb stick. :P
After this, I will often need to manually remove 1 or 2 very recent spywares that hijack the winlogon process or such. However, most of the time someone on internet will have caught this before me and you'll simply need to hit google.com to get some very good and easy removal instructions.

The reason I recently ditched Lavasoft Ad-Aware is that all the other programs I named will the same spywares and more. I see no point in running another scan if it won't yield sufficient/any results.