Earlier this week, I caught a nasty bit of malware along with a number of rogue spyware programs, backdoors, and some trojans here and there. Adaware did not work, spybot was disallowed installation, and other freeware programs I searched via Google were not effective.
Heck, even the program I am about to link did not work until I fiddled with some stuff on my end.
If you're experiencing sluggish performance and annoying popups for "spyware removers" (Beware of Spyware Guard 2008), then I highly suggest Malwarebyte's Anti-Malware. (Along of course, ad-aware, spybot, etc)
Give it a shot. =) It found a crap ton on my computer and I'm so thankful that everything's at optimal performance again.