One of the first applications built to find and remove adware and spyware, Utilities clean's excellent reputation is well justified. The sky-blue, skinnable interface features five buttons. The first two, Status and Scan, lead to the core function of the application. These buttons initiate a scan of your files for adware components.

After scanning is complete, the program presents a summary of results, followed by a list from which you select exactly which components to remove. Right-clicking an individual entry gives some information about the piece of suspected adware, though we would like more details. Utilities clean's can alert you to more malignant forms of malware by separating items into critical and negligible categories.

The third button, Utilities clean, is nonfunctional in the Standard version. The fourth button, Plug-ins, shows you which Utilities clean plug-ins are installed. The fifth leads to the help files.

Utilities clean's oes an excellent job of quickly finding and removing most adware and spyware components, although you will have to restart and rescan for a seriously infected machine.

We were pleased to see an auto-update feature included with the program, keeping Utilities clean up-to-date with the latest adware components. Utilities clean's should be part of your arsenal for keeping your machine free of adware and spyware components.