In the last month, the majority of problems I've worked on were adware related, either directly from adware or the results from users trying to remove said adware. Surfing porn when one should be working is the biggest cause I've come across. You should see the employees cringe when I tell the owner or office manager that a porn site hijacked the workstation(s).
I use a combination of Ad Aware, Hijack This, and an online scan from spywareinfo.com, which seems to work really well.
http://www.spywareinfo.com/xscan.phpIn the last month, the majority of problems I've worked on were adware related, either directly from adware or the results from users trying to remove said adware. Surfing porn when one should be working is the biggest cause I've come across. You should see the employees cringe when I tell the owner or office manager that a porn site hijacked the workstation(s). I don't do support "officially", but help friends, family, and even my girlfriend's clients when it doesn't require much of my time.
One was having problems with the computer dialing out for no apparent reason. About half of the time that someone picked up the phone, the computer had connected to something. I suspected a "porn dialer", and downloaded the most recent version of Ad-Aware to scan the system.
I was right. But, I never told anyone that knew the victim what had really happened. Apparently, he had unlimited long-distance service, so he didn't get a huge phone bill.