I am a bit confused as to which programmes are doing what job and if they are basically the same type of programme and which ones do I need. I see that Malwarebytes is recommended on this forum, what does this programme’s scan remove? I also have Spybot Search and Destroy - is this similar/same or doing a different kind of scan. I have also used Lavasoft Adaware and liked this programme and was thinking about installing it once more - again is this the same type of programme as above two? As you can see I am somewhat confused. Thanks
MBAM is an anti-malware program looking for basically spyware/adware/rogue programs, etc. it is on-demand so it is only looking when you actually have it scan, it isn’t resident (unless you get the paid version) like avast.
SuperAntiSpyware (SAS) is also commonly recommended and it does what it says on the tin (anti-spyware), it too is on-demand unless you get the Pro version.
These two are currently the to two (IMHO) anti-spyware/malware programs.
Spybot S&D whilst still in active development it is below the above, but does have a limited resident protection in the free version.
AdAware is IMHO a waste of HDD space.
Hi…
In addition to Ad-aware (Anniversary Edition) and Spybot, there are two other programs that offer realtime protection for free…
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/defender/default.mspx (Windows Vista already comes with this. If this is your OS, you can disregard these options.)
http://www.spywareterminator.com/
Windows Defender is more user friendly but less configurable while Spyware Terminator has more options but requires a bit more know how, in my opinion. Almost all of the other programs require you to pay in order to enable this feature.
I would also recommend SpywareBlaster…
http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html
Hope this helps. 
May God Bless you!
You’re welcome, IMHO - In My Humble Opinion.
For the dreaded acronyms you can check out this site http://acronyms.tfd.com this is the one for IMHO http://acronyms.tfd.com/IMHO.