Darren,

I've no idea why neither SpyBot nor AdAware work on your system since you
give no details however they are working well here on my Win Me systems as
they are for others.

There is no good reason why you should have any unwanted toolbars so I
feel your first priority should be to checkout your PC and remove all
unwanted malware be it a virus, trojan or commercial parasite. You know
of some of the tools to use, others include BHODemon, CWShredder and
HijackThis in addition to your preferred AV application.

As to your firewall this won't necessarily prevent the addition of
toolbars and the like as these are often installed as drive bys when
visiting certain web sites and preventing this is more a question of not
clicking boxes and setting ones security accordingly.

See also: Dealing with Unwanted Malware, Parasites, Toolbars and Search
Engines http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/unwanted.htm and also Browser
Hijacking http://www.spywareinfo.com/articles/hijacked/
--?
Mike Maltby MS-MVP



Darren Harris wrote:

It's a royal pain to have to adjust my toolbar every other day, but it
worse when some new crap inserts itself there.

A whole lot of garbage just appear in a new tolbar, and I have no idea
where it came from. I haven't downloaded or installed anything lately,
and I'm not sure if I should blame Ad-Aware or Spybot(neither of which
work on my WindowsME system).

The Sygate Personal Fiewall obviously was of no help either, and I'm
wondering if anyone else has this problem.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.