Sorry for being absent for so long. Real life can be quite the handful at times.
About AdwCleaner, it's not something that fights malicious code, it's mostly intended for cleaning unneeded/unwanted ad software(as the name suggests). It does a great job if I may say so. It searches very thoroughly and cleans up very well. I can't compare it to anti-
malware software since that puts it out of its category.
Before AdwCleaner I used
Junware Removal Tool, also a good piece of anti-adware software, but there was one time when I made the mistake of letting a girl use my laptop and I ended up with quite a few ad programs running on it, and when I ran JRT it didn't remove all of them, there were still leftovers and one StartUp folder just sitting there. It was then I decided to give AdwCleaner a go and it worked wonders. It managed to impress me on multiple occasions so I ditched JRT and now I just keep an updated version of AC on a flash stick in case I need to unf*ck someones browser/registry/startup folder.