Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Week 1 Hand On Point - My Experience with Ad-Aware

Okay, so I've been using a different version of this program for several years now (Ad-Aware SE, with a copyright date of 1995-2005--I think I probably got it from Software Licensing Services here at Pitt), on my office computer and my home PC, and I do run it periodically.  I have to say, though, that I never really understood how it worked, or what it did exactly, but I'd follow the directions and it seemed to do something. 

I never got around to downloading Ad-Aware onto my laptop, though, so I figured this would be a good opportunity to start fresh.

First, the thing froze my laptop, after about 20 minutes into the installation process.  So I started again.  I had to leave for an hour, so I figured I'd let it do a scan while I was gone.  Came home to find that it "was not responding"! 

Third time was the charm, however.  I ran a scan, and after about 5 minutes, it produced a record that showed it had found 3 cookies, which were successfully removed.

This looks different from the version I have on my other computers.  And it seems easier to use (after installation).  I think I'll load this version onto those other machines.

2 comments:

  1. I had a terrible time installing this, so your post is rather reassuring for me. What did you do to get it to work the third time? I had to uninstall it because my laptop would not even boot up properly after installing...

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  2. I am not actually sure what I did to finally make this program work. I DID notice that an icon had been added to my desktop, so I double-clicked it, and it began to run the program. That third time, it started right up and ran smoothly. I could see what it was scanning, so I was pretty confident it was doing what it was supposed to be doing. I usually just keep trying, and eventually, stuff works. :)

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