Originally posted here by t3gilligan
I have been working on a spyware problem with a windows 2000 machine. I am at the end of my rope, and am out of Idea's. I have run adaware, pest patrol, spy bot, I've used msconfig to halt the system startup programs, I have ran hijack this, and manually removed the files listed, and then the registry entries. The spyware re-enters the entry after refreshing. I don't have any more ideas, and cant find any other ideas, besides wiping the whole thing, which would be a nightmare to back up 3 years worth of info. If you have any ideas, i'd be thrilled to hear them. Just for your info the trouble is mainly with ist toolbar, and the lycos searchbar. Thank you much.
You might also want to try running Spybot and Adaware in safe mode. Sometimes those programs cannot delete something because its running. (booting into safe mode only allows the minimal system components to run)

Also: You did update the Spybot and Adaware definitions right?