Damn Internet Explorer

I spent the better part of 2 hours tonight trying to delete or disable a MALWARE - otherwise know as malicious spyware - on my computer. I had to actually go into the registry (anyone who has tried this knows what a freaky prospect this is especially if you havent been trained to decode it), with the help of my DH, and delete several instances over a couple different sessions, in addition to running Ad-Aware (good program) that searches for, quarentines (sp?) and deletes anything that threatens your computer. The problem came when it could not delete it even after rebooting, since the "file" (hiding as a driver for either the printer or the scanner) was read-only. ARRRGHHHHH!!!!During one of those sessions, I got lucky. I found the registry file containing the boot sequence for this MALWARE. SO far so good, but we will have to see what happens after the computer is rebooted tomorrow morning since I will just plain shut it off in a bit.
Yah Yah I know this just sounds like on of those darn computer things, but the strange thing I think is that My DH had a similar issue at his work. He uninstalled and deleted any instance of Internet Explorer he could find and is using Mozilla's FireFox (or is it FoxFire? I forget....) now. Voila! NO more malicious spyware for some time now....go figure......does this seem suspicious to anyone else????