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I'm wondering if anyone has any recommendations for the best anti-spyware/adware programs out there today. Free is good but would even consider something with a pricetag if it were good enough.

Same questions for Anti-Virus software.

Big preference for something that doesn't expect me to upgrade and buy a new copy/licence annually, and also for software that can be transferred between computers (like when a PC gets retired being able to install it on a new one, like a game. As opposed to tying a purchase to a single PC for eternity, like Windows).

I use AVG for my virus protection.  It's free. http://free.avg.com/homepage-appf8 (http://free.avg.com/homepage-appf8)

For spyware I use Ad Aware and Spybot Search and Destroy. They're both free too.

http://www.lavasoft.com/ (http://www.lavasoft.com/)
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/home/index.html (http://www.safer-networking.org/en/home/index.html)

These three products combined with not clicking on obviously stupid and dangerous links have kept my computer clean for years.

Pretty much same as Reg, although since switching to Vista 64 I've changed to Avast for anti-virus since AVG didn't seem to work properly.

Using Firefox with NoScript and AdBlock also helps massively.

To echo what has been said, I really like avast! (http://www.avast.com/).  I have tried McAfee/Norton/AntiVir/AVG/etc. but I like avast! the best - it's free (you have to "renew" your freeness license once a year I think), unobtrusive, and makes a submarine DIVE DIVE sound when it finds a virus.  Scared me to death the first time I heard it.

Since I started cruising with NoScript and Adblock Plus with EasyList on Firefox, my PC has stayed free from adware/spyware.  But when I help my friends who insist on opening forwarded email chains with 40 attachments from people they have never heard of, I go to Ad-Aware, Spybot - Search & Destroy, and HijackThis.

Haha awesome!  I'm tempted to torrent something dodgy just to hear that  :why_so_serious:

^^

Exactly my setup.

avast! is supposed to be the top end free program.  I hated the menu, which looks like some goofy mp3 player or a skinned wmp.  The submarine noises pop too frequently as well. 

Spybot is great.
AVG is great. 
AdAware is great.

I got some nasty malware at one point and spybot didn't find it (which is surprising).  I downloaded SuperAntiSpyware and it found and removed it.  I'm not thrilled with the product to use it daily, but it saved me a drive nuke. 

I've heard a lot of good things about Avast too. Every once in a while the AVG guys threaten to discontinue the free version.  They spend a few months warning me that I only have N weeks to switch over to the paid software. So far, they always change their mind at the last minute. The next time they try that routine I plan to make the switch over to Avast (which is probably why AVG always chickens out at the last minute anyway.)

On the very rare occasion that I've gotten something nasty that AVG, Spybot, and Ad Aware can't handle there are a couple of online cleaners I've used that have always worked for me.

http://www.windowsecurity.com/trojanscan/ (http://www.windowsecurity.com/trojanscan/)
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/ (http://housecall.trendmicro.com/)

I use Avast! on xp and Avira on win7 x64 (both free versions) and Spybot S&D. I've used Nod32 and been quite happy with it, but it's an annual license. On other people's machines I usually use Bitdefender as a decent all-in-one suite. 2 year license, 3 computers. It's a bit much for anyone computer savvy, but it's great for the clueless.

Only thing I'd add is Secunia Personal Software Inspector (http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal/).

It's a freeware utility that scans a huge percentage of your installed applications and compares it against its threat database and offer's direct downloads of patches etc.

I like McAfee Enterprise for anti-virus.  Mine is free though, so it's an easy choice.

The regular McAfee suite is junk.  Norton is worse than junk, and causes all kinds of system problems on top of it.

For my non-profit we use F-prot.

This for me as well.  I also have Hijack_This on my system "just in case". 

don't use antivir (http://www.free-av.com/) since the free version will constantly through popup's during a session, which sucks hard when you are full screen. 

All of the above and one more:

http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php (http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php)

It's very good at rooting out the wonderful Antivirus 2009 and other tough to kick scamware.

The daily popup can be disabled very, very simply.

Joining the Adaware+Spybot+AVG bandwagon. It's a good setup.

I'll second this, it's pretty good at getting rid of some pretty stubborn stuff.

I'll third this, Malwarebytes is better than the other two at finding and removing spyware, switched to it after Spybot failed to remove some stubborn ones. AVG is really good on the Antivirus front, it seems to have a slightly better detection score compared to the other free ones, but v8 added some bloat, the previous version as nice and clean, if not fancy.

I use Antivir and now I'm going to have to look for this.  It does only pop-up once a day though and if you manually scan at some point it seems to set this time.

I'll also chime in for Malwarebyte.

I went and looked at malwarebyte, unfortunately it doesn't work under Vista 64.

I use AVG for normal anti-virus.

One AVG tip, if you're doing a new install, make sure to install firefox before you install AVG. AVG has some browser help objects to root out web-borne viruses, but if the browser isn't there, it won't detect a new install and add them.

I use malwarebytes for cleaning PCs. So far it's been bulletproof for me.

If you cannot stop fucking your computer up:

Webroot - http://www.webroot.com/En_US/index.html

or

Panda Software - http://www.pandasecurity.com/usa/

or

NOD32 - http://www.eset.com/

NOD32 however is anti-virus only. It's damn good however.

For quick-fixing other people's computers or your own after minor screwups:

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware - http://www.malwarebytes.org/

and Stinger to pick off whatever the latest bugs are - http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/

Gotta question, anyone try out Malicious Software Removal Tool (http://www.microsoft.com/security/malwareremove/default.mspx) on a real infection?

Haven't had one in the wild at work for a while knock on wood (proxy web scanning, email scanning, and all ports firewalled to users).

I used to love Stinger, but it's been pretty worthless for me lately.  They also don't seem to update it very often anymore.

I've only just started using Malwarebytes, but I like it so far.