Because my laptop has ground to almost a halt and all other avenues have been exhausted I have been running Spybot for 24 hours now and its still not done..how long should a complete search take ?
depends on how fast your machine is (hem) and how big the disc is
but what have you done so far - have you cleared out the temp folders
scanners use tons of temp space - as does windows ... so that's your first target
If it has taken that long there is something wrong with the product or its installation, or it has been taken out.
Try downloading SUPERAntispyware (Free version) at http://www.SUPERAntiSpyware.com and run that to see if there is a problem. (I had a problem myself on an HP PC and HP Helpdesk gave me this link and it worked fine.
wish I'd seen this earlier - sasw is spoofware --- it will run the test ... find 10000s of problems ... and then (surprise surprise) will ask for money.
spybot search and destroy ... or malwarebytes(boogle them) are both tried and respected progs which will actually do some good