| Product: |
Ad-aware |
| Date: |
10.04.04 (314 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Free, Regular Upgrades
Disadvantages: Not 100%
I used to have terrible problems with my pc slowing down from time to time, its not the best mean machine out there but it was getting ridiculous.
That’s when I asked one of my more computer gifted friends over MSN messenger (life saver) if he knew the problem, he took a guess at spy software is tracking me and I know have so many on my hard disk that it has become a problem.
Spy software what is it?
Basically spy software can do a lot from tracking your position on a single web-site, to your whole internet movement, to your PC file transactions.
Shock horror what should I do?
He advise some free for personnel home use software called “Ad-aware” by “Lavasoft”. It was easy enough to download being part of the “snap files” network, from:
”http://www.snapfiles.com/get/adaware.ht ml”
The means no cueing as I have a lot of problems with “File Planet” lately due to such big cues that can reach 3 hours considering my cut off is after 2 hours was not very useful, unless of course you pay but a mild computer user like myself does not want to splash out too much money.
Quick download only being 1654 KB, considering an average dial up can transfer at 56 KB a second its not a very long download.
Easy self-open and install file puts everything in the right places no fiddling about like some other specialist software. I selected to have a shortcut on my desktop so with just two clicks it was open.
I was faced with 5 options:
Status:
This allows you to check on all the details of the current software that you have plus you can search for upgrades. These upgrades are very frequent but very useful every time I use it; it finds 3 to 12 new spy files on my computer. Upgrade system is very easy to use plus it adds no extra charge on to the system so it is still free just click, wait and use.
Scan Now:
This is the basic function of th
e software it will scan through your hard disk, or whatever disk you want it to and will find spy files automatically. After it has finished scanning it’ll present you with a whole list of files, shamefully I have 1036 files first time I done it and my system only went in for a “PC World” check about 6 months ago. I selected all the files and quarantined them, I was advise it was best to quarantine before you delete as some files are put there by software and are needed to run your system so I scan everyday and empty my quarantine list every week. If you do accidentally remove a file from your PC it is very easy to get them back because most software will tell you about the missing file name, just ask a friend with the same software to search for it and just put the file back.
Ad-watch
I do not know what this is and this is a pay only service.
Plug-Ins
You can plug in other software to use along side this software at the same time. I have not yet to use this system so I would not like to comment but my friend says he runs a virus scanner along side as well.
Help
Ad-aware comes with a very useful manual that runs in like the Microsoft help system so nothing much new to get used to here.
In short I very nice small piece of software to use that is free (which we all like). Its free to personnel home use because we tell them about any problems and they get their money from the big businesses whom pay for the service use.
Just be careful when removing files from your computer and enjoy the speeding up of your PC.
If you have done all of this and your PC is still very slow, you may need to defragment your computer, go to My Computer right click on the C: drive, then properties, then tools, then defragment your PC just make sure you have nothing running that will interfere because it will need to run on its own for up to 24 hours.
© David James Clark
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