I just thought I'd let everyone know that Lavasoft's glorious adware and spyware remover has just been updated. Version 6.0 has been out for a couple weeks in pay form, but just today or yesterday they released the free version.

I've installed and run the new program. It's a bit more bubbly than I care for, but it certainly gets the job done! I was running 5.83 with the latest library when I remembered to check for the new program release. 5.83 found 5 components in my registry before I aborted the scan to see how many the new program would find. Well, it found 23 (but it now calls them "objects"). All total it found 111 objects on my system. Huzzah!

It looks to be a great improvement to an already great piece of software. There appear to be a lot of options added to it as well.

*edit*
Here's the link

I grabbed it yesterday and it looks pretty good. Does the job, for sure. Don't forget to update your signature files after you install it (there's a newer one already), but at least the sigfile update is included within the main program now.

For those who don't realize it, they've now restructured their purchasing system. There's three tiers of Ad-Aware now, with the lowest tier being the free version.

I have only one big complaint, and it centers around the tier-restructuring: One of the features of version 5 that I did use, has now been grayed out in the free version and moved up a tier. That's the "automatically mark all files for deletion" feature. I forget what the option is called exactly. Basically, when a scan is finished, and it finds stuff to delete, all of the boxes are unchecked and you have to check them. It's a couple of extra mouse clicks for me now (note that a right-click will give you a "check all" option, so it's only two clicks).

And really, I shouldn't complain anyway. I certainly don't bear them any grudge for wanting to make a buck. I should just shut up and pay for the next tier.

I've had good success with Spybot. It seems to catch some of the baddies that Ad-Aware missed. Be sure your definitions are current, though.

I don't know about Spybot, but I've found that many spyware removers will indeed find more stuff than Ad-aware, but they find the wrong things. They're simply too aggressive. I tried one that wanted to delete a lot of files that were necessary or just simple promotional files from game makers that don't actually do anything bad.

Ad-aware has been much more reliable to me.

That feature to update the sigfile is one of my favorite new features. The program also seems faster at going through files. I have it scan 3 hard disks, and it takes less time than 5.83 did with 2.

I never knew that 5.x had the "check all" feature. I would have liked that as well. Since I never knew it I suppose I'm not too upset about losing it

I just installed this new adaware on a new machine, and did a full scan with the default options. Everything came up checked, and I just hit next to delete them all. Are you sure the only reason the option doesn't exist is because it's The Way It Works now?

Matthew

Interesting. Mine didn't come up checked.

Perhaps it's because I de-installed the 5.x version, so it removed the registry entry. Maybe I could hack it back in by figuring out the correct registry entry. Hm.