CWS usually attacks through security holes in Internet Explorer and MS Java. Spyware Blaster seems to do a good job in preventing its installation.
Possibly just an aside here, but in searching the web for CWSShredder yesterday, I find that it doesn;t seem to be available anymore. 
Anybody have a viable link?
You should go one step further and only close pop-ups from the Start bar (right-click on the icon at the bottom of the screen and choose “Close”).
Some pop-ups I’ve seen have fake X boxes. If you click them, you still go to their website.
It’s CWShredder, not CWSShredder, and it can still be found here. Though it hasn’t been updated since June, so it is not effective against some of the latest, most agressive variants of CWS.
This afternoon, I went to set up a brand new machine.
I attempted to uninstall the Java client, and Windows was unable to find the unistall routine. Upon inspection, I found that the vendor was shipping these machines with the Sun Java VM already installed!
I don’t know if this is because Microsoft is no longer supporting the old MS Java VM, or if it is because Gateway doesn’t want to install a vulnerable component.
Very interesting indeed.
Ironically, after reading this thread I thought “Hmm, better make sure my computer doesn’t have any traces of this thing.” Downloaded CWShredder, and within 5 minutes I had more spyware and hijackers than I’ve had in the past 2 years. None of them seemed to be CoolWebSearch, but they were just as annoying. I had to get HijackThis! to eliminate them all. I don’t know if there’s something fishy with CWShredder or what, but in any case I recommend HijackThis!. Took care of the problem in a few seconds.