Ad-aware an internet blessing (Ad-aware)

Member Name: sit2020

Product:	Ad-aware
Date:	20/05/04 (491 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Faster pc, no spyware, FREE

Disadvantages: Not very easy to use, so follow the help section.

Any of you who have read any of my opinions, will realise my PC has been totally unusable. This has been the direct result of little hidden programs that have found their way onto my machine. From different sources, but onto it none the less. I was under the impression that having anti virus software on my PC and always kept up to date would be enough to protect my PC, how wrong was I.

The programs, I do mean programs, are not viruses, they are in a lot of ways far worse. They are called spyware and thiefware. They are from various companies and they get onto people’s computers to carry out a number of different tasks.

Some programs cause pop-ups, the ads that appear in a new browser window for no apparent reason. Most pop-ups are harmless if not annoying. But some are far worse. They could cause you to reconnect your PC to a different server at a cost of £1.50 per minute. That could soon cost you hundreds if not thousands of pounds, the first anyone would know is when they get their phone bill.

Other programs cause net searches to be redirected to sites you did not want. often online shops. To be honest I would not consider buying anything from a shop that uses such methods to attract customers to its site.

All of these programs have one thing in common, they wrap themselves inside your machine and because they are all trying to send out information whilst you are online they cause your machine to become slower and slower.

I had noticed that my computer was getting slower for some time. It was when I used a peer to peer program that things really got out of hand. I was getting booted off of the internet, was unable to connect without restarting the computer, my internet explorer was giving me strange web search results, that was when it was working. The list of problems was getting worse
by the day.

I started to look closer at what I had been doing to cause this, I even went as far as looking at the small print that I had agreed to when I downloaded the peer to peer program (Kazaa). Well I will now always read the annoying longwinded terms and conditions. You know what I am on about its between two clicks of next, it says I agree with a box full of words that we have all not bothered to look too closely at. If I had bothered at the time I would have seen a whole list of programs that where downloaded along with the peer to peer program. These included programs called Cydoor and Gain. I could have bought online a version of Kazaa without these programs, but I thought I knew best. I even tried to delete the programs manually all that happened was Kazaa stopped working.

But Kazaa was not the only culprit, I run a fairly old low tech PC, I was always a bit jealous of those people who had little pop up helpers, you know the cat, the dog, the robot etc. Well I found my own and it was better, I got a green parrot. It stayed on my screen even when I was not using word. Wow I loved my parrot, I told people all about it, well it was called a bonzi buddy, it was free and guess what it came with free spyware, oh how happy does that make me feel. I eventually got fed up with it and uninstalled it, but the spyware remained. I did not use gator, but I do remember how many people raved on about this free tool that saved you typing in forms. Yep comes complete with free spyware. So does gozilla the program that allows you to resume downloads. How many of you have got or had in the past comet cursor? Yep it has the spies with it, so did audio galaxy, The list is extensive. Other spyware finds its way onto your machine without you downloading it.

So what
was I to do. The answer was a complex one, and partly my own idea. First was to download Ad-aware from Lavasoft, next would be to download another browser in case Internet explorer became totally useless in my attempts to remove these nasty programs. I chose netscape navigator as I had never had it on my pc before and my way of thinking was the resident spyware on my pc would not corrupt it.

So here I was with both downloaded and I was ready to do my bit of ghost busting. I opened Ad-aware and without reading it too closely I ploughed straight in. Well I found over 500 yes five hundred bits of spyware, so I got rid of the lot in one foul swoop, was I happy. Well ecstatic at how easy it was to use and how it freed my PC. Hmmmmmmmm Well that was until I rebooted my computer and tried to use it. Internet not a hope, Internet explorer no go either, in fact I could do very little. I blamed Ad-aware calling it a few choice names. When I calmed down, I looked at Ad-aware closer, everyone had told me how good it was, the magazines, Internet and friends all praised this program. So maybe it was me. Well of course it was, if I had taken the time to read and use the program properly this would never have happened. So my first word of warning on this program is READ FIRST. I went to the quarantine section and restored all the bits I had chosen to remove. Was I lucky that the program automatically quarantines rather than just deleting them, a further reboot and I had my very slow machine again.

This time I uninstalled Kazaa first, then ran a virus scan. So far so good. This time I decided to use Ad-aware slowly. When opened it has various displays, on the left are a series of buttons.

Status, this shows the o
pening screen and has details of the last system scan, total objects removed, total Ad-aware scans objects in ignore list and objects quarantined (oh I really do love that bit). It also has details of my Ad-watch status, mine says not loaded. The reason for that is I am using the free download version for personal use, for me to have Ad-watch I would have to upgrade and pay between $26.95 to $49.95 depending on which version I chose.

The second button is scan now, this brings up a menu with three options; perform smart system scan (this is the option I choose), Use custom scanning options (too complicated for me), Select drives/folders to scan (I leave this alone as well). Below is a green button that says “activate in-depth scan (recommended) (this again I keep the green button ticked (selected)).

The third button is Ad-watch, this brings up a menu for upgrading, as I have not I cannot tell you anymore about that.

The fourth button is plug ins, this brings up a screen showing, name creator and description, I have none in my list.

The fifth and final button is HELP. I cannot stress strongly enough the relevance of this. It will take you step by step through how to use Ad-aware, having used this I am now able to look at the objects and choose if I want to select it for quarantine, if I want to select all similar objects. I find details of each object, the risk factor, what they do and where they are in my PC.

So having run my first scan I selected 160 objects for quarantine. Then made sure my PC worked, that I could connect to the Internet and browse. Before carrying on getting rid of the files a bit at a time. I did have to use netscape navigator to connect at one point, this enabled me to download internet explorer straight over the
top of itself as my version had become so corrupt that even trying to use its own repair and fix did not work. (For those wanting to know, if you try to delete internet explorer using add/remove programs it will offer you the chance to repair itself, well that happens on windows 98). I carried on in this manner until I managed to get rid of all the spyware. I did have a problem getting one file into quarantine, for some strange reason Ad-aware was unable to quarantine it. But as I knew where to look for it (again thanks to Ad-aware) I was able to manually delete it. Yes I did make sure the computer worked before emptying the recycle bin.

So how do I feel now, well a bit foolish for allowing these programs to cause me so many problems. Very thankful to Lavasoft for a brilliant program, without Ad-aware I would have had to wipe the hard drive and start from scratch. I have learnt a very painful lesson. I now will always read the agreements before clicking on accept (this will not stop all spyware but will stop a lot), also I will run Ad-aware on a regular basis in the same way I run my anti virus software.

This is not the easiest program to use purely because of what it has to do. Having said that following the help section does make it all perfectly clear. The end result is now my old computer is running a lot smoother. Although not perfectly, but that's because I have loads of things on it and I still use a dial up Internet connection. At the end of the day now my computer is running much better

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