restoring my pc or laptop back to factory settings

milo

You often need much more than just Spybot S&D to get rid of existing adware, but it's a good start.

First try to clean your PC completely of viruses and adware. Keep your Spybot up to date, and get other adware tools such as 'Ad-Aware'. If either of these two are still reporting infection then you'll have to look at getting specific tools for the specific adware. Searching on the web for the adware name will help guide you.

Make sure you have up-to-date Antivirus (free.grisoft.com for the free AVG antivirus), and even do extra online scanning at for this)

Use a firewall, such as the free ZoneAlarm.

Once clean, 'Spywareblaster' and 'Spywareguard' can help stop more adware infecting your PC.

If you want to go the whole hog and reformat your hard disk then make sure you have at least the WindowsXP CD (make sure it's 'full version' and not 'upgrade')and a bootup disc. You can make this disc just now in XP, and even download them on the web (bootdisk.com?). I recently used a Windows98 bootdisc to get into an XP Home machine - this is my favorite method as it seems to work with all new Windows versions. Make sure you DO have a bootdisc though before contemplating a re-format otherwise you won't get very far.