Phil has asked us a question today:
Hi Matt
I am having problems with my Ad-Aware program. The last 2 week when I look for up date it tells I am 20 days since I up dated but when I connect to up date the program it tells me no new up dates available. This week it still tells me I am 27 days since I up dated. Now when I connect to up date it tell me there is an error in connecting. I can still run the program and it still, some times find, bugs and it will let me get rid of them. Do you know any problems in connecting to Ad Aware this year or what I can do to find out what is happening. See you all next month. Phil
Ad-Aware is an Anti-Spyware type product. The SE version is free and there are paid versions too. It has had good reviews over the years along with programs like Spybot Search and Destroy and Microsoft Windows Defender. I have used it in the past and found it quite good. Most people recommend using more than one scanner over your system in case one picks up what the other missed. Note you should only run 1 scanner all the time in the background as the 2 will conflict if run simultaneously.
These scanners do rely on 'signature' files just like Anti-Virus and thus need regular updating to combat new nasties that emerge. I remember a while back there was a buzz around the net against Lavasoft (the makers of Ad-aware) as they dropped of the map for a while. There were no updates to the program or the signature files so I was thinking this may have happened again.
I did a Google search which turned up lots of results from 2 years ago. I then did an advanced search and set the date to be articles/pages from the last month.
This led me to some discussions on the Lavasoft forums such as this one: Lavasoft Support Forums
Turns out what has happened is that Lavasoft have a new product out called "Ad-Aware 2007". You can't update your old SE version to this one, it's a whole new program. Updates for this product are being issued by Lavasoft and it seems to be an improvement over the old version in all ways but one.
The issue is that the new product doesn't work on Windows 95, 98 or ME.
It does work if you use Windows 2000, XP or Vista.
So Phil if you have Windows 2000 or newer then the best bet is:
- Uninstall the old version of Ad-Aware
- Download the new free version here: Ad-Aware 2007 Free
- Install the new version and run updates as usual
As an alternative if you use a 'legal' version of Win XP you could give Microsoft Windows Defender a try. It's what I use on my XP systems but it doesn't work on older OS either.
It seems there may be some unofficial updates available for the old Ad-Aware SE product for those users whose Windows version hasn't come into the new millennium :)
This Lavasoft Security Centre page has a link to a new definitions file that you can download. It looks like this
and is on the top right:
It is just a zip file so you will need to read the help file in your old Ad-Aware SE program to work out how to use this to manually update your program.
But don't do this if you have a newer OS. Just download the new version and run with it
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