first off you need a good anti virus (i use avg free) and a good firewall (i use sunbelt personal, i used to use zonealarm till i learned they sent information on your computer back to their HQ for some unknown reason,and you cant turn it off its a shame, cause zonealarm was a really nice program)
as far as spy/adware, download ad-aware se, that will get most of it, spybot search and destroy is another good one. and you need spywareblaster. it keeps that crap from getting on your computer in the first place. then defragment the drive (im suprised how few people do this!) and disable unneeded services and processes and your good to go :thumbsup:

yeah and if its not fixed after that, you could go to a tech geek forum and post a hijack this log, basically they will tell you step by step how to totally clean your computer. bless them