Just wondering, I recently installed Ad-aware and Spybot to remove some pop-up software and it took off quite a few of these programmes. Around the same time the Windows XP started freezing on me, and I had to turn off the computer at the plug to get the computer rebooted. Is there a possibility that removing some of this popup software did this to the computer? Anything else that could do it? Any solutions? 
Thanks
Alastair
It shouldn’t affect your system, per se, however, many “freeware” packages you can download come with adware as part of the deal. In most such cases, removing the associated adware will disable the primary program, until you reinstall it.
Is there any pattern or consistency to this freezing? If it’s doing it when you run certain programs, you might want to look at them first. Intermittent problems like this are very difficult to diagnose and correct. XP has some repair tools, like System File Checker you might want to try.
Some spyware heavily infiltrates key parts of your system. Programs like Adaware do not always find/fix everything the spyware has done. Spyware authors produce new variants all the time. The anti-spyware authors do not see all variants as well as lagging behind in updating their programs.
What you are describing can easily be caused by improper spyware removal. (Some spyware goes to great lengths to make themselves unremovable without side effects. Grrsh.)
You may need to re-install the OS.
The real fix is to never, ever do what ever it was that caused those programs to get on your system in the first place.
A way to avoid getting ad/spy-ware installed on your system is to get some program with ad/spy-ware blocking such as “Spybot search and destroy” or “Ad-aware premium”. Alternatively, you could configure IE correctly so it won’t automatically download programs from every site it goes to or use a different browser such as Opera or Mozilla.