- Quick specs
- Price: Free; paid upgrade available
- Operating system: Windows 2000/XP/Vista
- Date added: May 21, 2008
- Total Downloads: 327,137,714
- Downloads last week: 461,744
- See full specifications
A newer version of Ad-Aware 2008 is available.
(Download doesn't provide access to previous versions of this program.)
- CNET editors' rating: stars
- Average user rating: stars out of 11498 votes
See all user reviews
CNET editors' review
Reviewed by: CNET Staff
One of the first applications built to find and remove adware and spyware, Ad-Aware's excellent reputation is well-justified. The 2008 edition looks to be more of a course correction from some of the missteps in the 2007 version.
The adware and malware detection engine has undergone a significant overhaul, resulting in faster scan times and improved rootkit detection. New users should notice that the app performs faster than integrated antivirus and antimalware programs: That's because only the paid version of Ad-Aware comes with a new antivirus engine. Only users of Ad-Aware's paid versions reap that benefit.
The updater is no longer permanently on, and it instead runs in your system's background only if you activate it--eliminating a big problem with last year's model. The interface improvements include six skins, cleanly designed tabbed navigation for each of the program's main functions, and easy-to-see red Xs and green check marks to indicate a features status.
Besides the antivirus integration, other features disabled in the free version include the real-time Ad-Watch guard, heuristics scanning, the scheduler, and plug-ins. Although Ad-Aware detects and removes malware with ease, we hesitate to recommend it as anything more than a secondary detection engine considering that many free competitors offer more features and similar, if not stronger, levels of effectiveness.
Watch the CNET video review of Ad-Aware 2008:
Publisher's description
From Lavasoft :With the ability to scan your RAM, Registry, hard drives, and external storage devices for known data-mining, advertising, and tracking components, Ad-Aware 2008 can clean your system easily, allowing you to maintain a higher degree of privacy while you surf the Web.
Ad-Aware 2008 includes an improved threat detection, enhanced rootkit removal system, faster updates, Lavasoft ThreatWork to submit suspicious files for analysis, and is now compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit Windows Vista.
What's new in this version:
Ad-Aware 2008 includes an improved threat detection, enhanced rootkit removal system, faster updates, Lavasoft ThreatWork to submit suspicious files for analysis, and is now compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit Windows Vista.
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User reviews of Ad-Aware 2008 7.1.0.8
- Average user rating: 3.8 stars out of 11498 votes
- My rating: 0 stars Write review
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Showing 5 of 528 user reviewsSee all 528 user reviews
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28 out of 35 people found this review helpful
Version: Ad-Aware 2008 7.1.0.8
Pros: What I got was n extremely decent secondary anti-malware scanner. The GUI matches my Vista Ultimate theme, scans in about the same time as my #1 anti spy program, Spy Sweeper. All this after what used to be my favorit, Spy Emergency took a backward slide in 2008. That is on my Vista Ultimate system it freezes itself and the entire system at about 21,000 files (& 25+ minutes into the scan). Ad-Aware 2008 is better then I'd have expected now as Ad Watch & auto updating are now disabled in the free version.
Cons: A little over aggressive on cookies.
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44 out of 67 people found this review helpful
Version: Ad-Aware 2008 7.1.0.8
Pros: I was excited about this since many people said there were a ton of improvements. I'll give this a few props since it was able to install properly, meanwhile it didn't work on everyone else, so it made me feel more fortunate.
Cons: This is awful. Doing a smart scan finds 39 infections and I had to cancel the scan in the middle of 5 minutes because it takes way longer than the SE version. 39 infections?! After I stopped scan, I didn't find any place to view what I got infected with. It must have found a lot of tracker cookies like SE but even my small to decent adware/spyware scanners didn't find 39 infections; hard to believe ad-aware was telling the truth unless they really did make this major improvement.
Interface, to me looks a lot like the 2007 version, still glossy and crappy and eating up all my RAM while scanning and even having the program open makes my computer slow. The scan tends to freeze once it reaches my C:\Windows folder and files and caused my Opera, Firefox, and Pidgin to "not respond" which never happened to me before.
Still, a wonderful 25.19MB after installation added on which we don't even know where all the clutter comes from. While installing, it also prompted me to remove my SE version and I refused. It seems like they tried to move people up and force us to use the latest version.
Scanning time takes almost four times longer than the original SE version, and the RAM usage is also almost four times more.
This program keeps getting worse everyday and I'm definitely going to stick with Ad-Aware SE. This version (2008) is worthy of scold.
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22 out of 29 people found this review helpful
Version: Ad-Aware 2008 7.1.0.8
"It's ok on my Vista ultimate system."
Pros: Though I can't speak for anyone else, this app seems to be fine on my Vista system. Scans as fast as any other of it's kind, looks great, updates often even though it as to be done manually. I really like the counters, time, path and item so it's fun to watch it. Just installed it a few days ago and I've only had one of what could be called a false positive on a website that I feel is clean, so I set it to ignore, (easy enough to do). Now that the auto updating & add watch have been removed, it's much better then the 2007 version. Might be some haven't really given it a chance after last years garbage program.
Cons: I can't complain about it as a backup scanner. It seems to compliment my paid program well. It took them way to long to get this all worked out but it seems much better now.
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27 out of 33 people found this review helpful
Version: Ad-Aware 2008 7.1.0.8
"The most popular spyware remover."
Pros: It has 2 levels of scan & nearly always finds something to remove, even if its only tracking cookies.
Cons: I cant see how ths is any better than the previous version.
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14 out of 30 people found this review helpful
Version: Ad-Aware 2008 7.1.0.8
Pros: It continues to work great, through its many-many iterations.
- See all 528 user reviews Write review
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