The next step in the process is to make a final diagnosis. Although it's an interesting exercise to read up about specific types of spyware and try to manually diagnose the problem, this can get very time consuming. Fortunately, there are plenty of great anti-spyware utilities available, most of them free.

Anti-spyware tools are a growth industry and new, commercial applications are appearing all the time, just like antivirus software. The best of breed are:

• Spybot Search & Destroy,
• Spy Sweeper, and
• HijackThis.