spam filter not working

Hello,
Im having this problem..I want to filter some IPs and spam words. I tried to use the blacklist and comments queue, neither of it seems to work, doesn’t matter what I enter, it doesn’t filter anything. I use version 2.0.2, maybe its bugged? Is there any plugin that has this functionality? Ive never been succesful to do an upgrade (messes special characters and so on) and the web is quite big so thats out of the game..
Thank you for any answer