- Quick specs
- Price: Free
- Operating system: Windows Me, Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows 98
- Date added: May 03, 2007
- See full specifications
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- CNET editors' rating: 5.0 stars
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Average user rating:
3.5 stars
out of 10963 reviews
See all user reviews
A newer version of Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition is available.
(Download doesn't provide access to previous versions of this program.)
CNET editors' review
Reviewed by: CNET Staff
Read a CNET review of the full version of Lavasoft Ad-Aware.
One of the first applications built to find and remove adware and spyware, Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition's excellent reputation is well justified. The sky-blue, skinnable interface features five buttons. The first two, Status and Scan, lead to the core function of the application. These buttons initiate a scan of your files for adware components. After scanning is complete, the program presents a summary of results, followed by a list from which you select exactly which components to remove. Right-clicking an individual entry gives some information about the piece of suspected adware, though we would like more details.
Ad-Aware SE can alert you to more malignant forms of malware by separating items into critical and negligible categories. The third button, Ad-Watch, is nonfunctional in the Standard version. The fourth button, Plug-ins, shows you which Ad-Aware plug-ins are installed. The fifth leads to the help files.Ad-Aware SE does an excellent job of quickly finding and removing most adware and spyware components, although you will have to restart and rescan for a seriously infected machine. We were pleased to see an auto-update feature included with the program, keeping Ad-Aware up-to-date with the latest adware components. Ad-Aware SE should be part of your arsenal for keeping your machine free of adware and spyware components.
Publisher's description
With the ability to scan your RAM, Registry, hard drives, and external storage devices for known data-mining, advertising, and tracking components, Ad-Aware SE easily can clean your system, allowing you to maintain a higher degree of privacy while you surf the Web.
Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition boasts a number of improvements. Extended memory scanning now scans all modules loaded by a process. Scanning uses the all- new CSI (Code Sequence Identification) technology to identify new and unknown variants of known targets. Extended Registry scanning now scans Registry branches of multiple-user accounts and performs additional smart checks to detect dynamically created references. Scanning speed is noticeably faster, and this version offers an Extended Scanning mode for known and unknown/possible browser hijackers.
New in version 1.06: Disk-scan is approximately 30 percent faster. CSI scan is now more efficient. Added "Scan for low-risk threats" option, to scan for targets with low TAC index. Ad-Watch CSI engine performance highly improved; using less CPU and Memory as well as having a smaller footprint. GUI adapted to use the new TAC.
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Previous Versions:
User reviews of Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition 1.06
- Average user rating: 3.8 stars out of 10963 votes
- My rating: 0 stars Write review
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Showing 5 of 443 user reviewsSee all 443 user reviews
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39 out of 55 people found this review helpful
Version: Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition 1.06
Pros: Its free and very easy to use.Lots of updates are available often.This has been a long time favourite of mine.
Cons: Sadly its being left in in the dark ages now, with recent new antispywares surpassing it.I ran a scan today and again found nothing.I ran a scan with Counterspy and it found "Backdoor Prorat" I did not remove it, then did a spy scan with SpyEmergency and that also picked up "Backdoor Prorat" of which I removed.Sadly,Lavasoft Ad-Aware is now off my system for the first time in 4 years.
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13 out of 19 people found this review helpful
Version: Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition 1.06
"Works well--faster than previous version"
Pros: This updated version of Ad-Aware is somewhat faster at scanning. Other than that, I'm not sure what else is different.
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18 out of 22 people found this review helpful
Version: Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition 1.06
"NEW Version!!! ??? really???"
Pros: Easy to use. Easy to update. Ranks high on finding and getting rid of junk and bandwidth stealers from your PC. Fixes some that the others don't find.
Cons: This "New" version was added May 3rd. I got the C/Net email and was like "YIPEE!!!" and then I downloaded it. Come to find out that the only thing new was the DAT file that it comes with. That is nice to have I will agree and shouldn't be listed as a CON, but... it's 39 days old already. What kinda testing does C/Net have to do before they approve the new update? Because I have downloaded some real dogs from here that would be nightmares to get rid of if I weren't testing on virtual machines.
It is still a great product though and recommend it everyone. Especially if you have kids that are on the net.
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9 out of 11 people found this review helpful
Version: Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition 1.06
Pros: This program is my first stop if something is wrong with a PC. The new update, I think, is a fix for Vista. I am seeing a lot of that. Adaware always finds the nasties, including Alexa related stuff in Windows! Good stuff!
Cons: No active background runtime. Adaware does not catch anything coming in, it only finds them in scans.
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0 out of 1 people found this review helpful
Version: Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition 1.06
"excellent/ Almost as good as Spybot - Search & Destroy 1.4"
Pros: I was pretty impressed this program is almost as good as Spybot - Search & Destroy 1.4 .. sometimes spybot catches something ad-aware dose not, but also somemtimes it is the other way around...
- See all 443 user reviews Write review
