Re: AdAware Instructions

Revised: August 9, 2004

Ad-Aware is a useful tool that searches your computer for Spy-ware. Spy-ware is a general term for programs that surreptitiously monitor your actions. They can slow down your computer, cause unwanted pop-ups, and may gather personal information (without your knowledge) and relay it to advertisers, spammers or other interested parties.

In order to keep your computer running smoothly, we recommend running Ad-Aware (and other spy-ware removal utilities such as SpyBot) at least once per month.

Note: Ad-Aware Personal edition is free for non-commercial use. If you are using this software in a commercial environment, you should purchase a licensed copy.

Below are instructions on how to download and use Ad-Aware.

Download

Go to www.lavasoftusa.com to download a copy of Ad-Aware. Home users should download Ad-Aware SE Personal. You may be re-directed to Download.com (or other mirror) to download the software. If you already have Ad-Aware installed, skip to the next section.

Running Ad-Aware

In order to properly detect harmful files, you need to update Ad-Aware approximately once per month, or each time you run the program.

Note: If you are running an older version of Ad-Aware, new updates may not be available. If you constantly receive a message “no updates available”, you may need to upgrade to a newer version of the software.

To start Ad-Aware double-click on the desktop icon or click on Start – Programs – LavaSoft AdAware.

• Once Ad-Aware starts, click on “Check for updates” and then choose Connect. If a new reference file is available, choose OK to download and install the file.

• Once updated, click on Start to start a scan. A typical scan takes 10 to 15 minutes to complete. Once the scan is complete, a list of items will appear.

• Typically you want to select and remove (also called quarantine) all items that are detected. To select all items, you may need to right-click on the list if items and choose “Select all items” from the pop-up menu.

• Once the items are selected, choose Next to start the removal process.

• You may see a message that some items could not be removed and recommending you run Ad-Aware on next restart. Choose yes to this message. Restart your computer and allow Ad-Aware to perform another scan.