Stopping Unstoppable Malware?

A frustrated troubleshooter asks: "I've recently been asked to fix a friend's computer, and for once, I'm stumped. There is a piece of malware on his computer that puts up Aurora popup windows. Neither Spybot nor Ad-Aware detect this, so I've had to try to manually clean the system. However, the files re-write themselves, making the malware grow back as fast as you can remove it. The only "solution" is to run an uninstaller written by the people who wrote the Aurora pop-up itself. Has anyone dealt with this particularly painful piece of pop-up programming, and if so, how have you successfully removed it?" What other pieces of Malware have you found that was difficult to remove? Aside from using programs like the afore mentioned Spybot and Ad-Aware (and others of their ilk), what other methods of Malware removal have proven to be the most successful?

Comments

Alas Microsoft

[fm6]

I notice that nobody has had the courage to point out that AdAware and Spybot are no longer the leading antispyware tools. The leader is (gasp) Microsoft Antispyware, and it catches a lot of stuff Spybot misses. Though Spybot also catches a few things MA misses. As for AdAware, it's fallen so far behind I rarely bother with it.

I still have one small piece of spyware hiding somewhere that none of the above can find. It only runs when I run IE (which I very rarely do these days), pathetically raising popup windows with nothing in them! I haven't bothered to chase it down, since it isn't that much of a nuisance. But maybe I'll apply some of the tricks I learned today, just for the exercise!

Which brings me to the #1 anti-spyware measure: run Internet Explorer as little as you can!