Dunno where you guys pick up all that spyware and whatnot coz I don't even remember how that looks like.
Best advice I may give to you is install
Spyware Blaster, update it manually (or donate to get automatic updates feature), enable all protection and be happy.
I've been using Spyware Blaster for many years and every once in a blue moon when I remember to run
Ad-Aware, it finds absolutely nothing. And this is without any firewall or anti-virus whatsoever in the last 7-8 years.
Before any smarta$$

comes in to suggest looking into task manager: I do that daily, using
Codestuff Starter - nothing runs without me knowing about it.
Many sites use Adobe Flash to render their advertising. Nir Sofer's tiny little tool called
TurnFlash is simple and efficient: a single click on its icon disables/enables Flash system-wide, so whenever you feel overwhelmed by such intrusive sh!t, just click it away.

I keep it disabled by default.
Oh and just for completeness' sake: I use
SlimBrowser as a front-end to IE6-SP1, due to some nice features that I got used to, in time.