Ad-Aware and Spybot are completely unnecessary. Getting rid of spyware can be done much faster removing it by hand with hijack this, startup.cpl, and ccleaner. Startup.cpl cleans up the startup. Hijack this allows you to see all the places that spyware or viruses might hide out and allows you to zap them. CCleaner is a very good program for cleaning out temporary folders.

So here's the thing. Ad aware and spybot are going to take forever to run, and are probably going to run all the time taking up precious resources. People on lifehacker should be savvy enough to reboot into safe mode, and run the "holy trinity". Startup.cpl, Hijack This, and Ccleaner.

Nothing can survive it. (Except rootkits)

ghotli

It seems no matter how many apps I run, each finds something the others didn't, AA included. I've just gotten used to running the AA, SB, SpywareBlaster trifecta, and have had pretty good luck.

junkmail

@robmcbell

i've always used both, since one would always catch something the other one didn't.

Norcross

Does Ad-Aware actually do anything that SpyBot S&D doesn't already do? I used to run both but SB always caught a lot of stuff and AA never seemed to do all that much.

robmcbell

@Felipe Coury: Seems you're right. I'll post an updated link if/when it becomes available.

Kevin Purdy

I'd like to like Ad-Aware (and I sort of do, since last time I checked, it detected 11 viruses that ClamWin, Spybot, and Windows Defender didn't) but the damn scan freezes for some reason, so I can't clean, quarantine or whatever.

First time I used it, I let it scan while I went to sleep. 9 hours later, it didn't appear to be scanning anything, and yet the "Stop Scan" button is still there, presumably waiting for it to finish. It wouldn't close, so I shut it down via Task Manager.

I'm sure it's all my fault somehow, though.

Charlie_Bucket

It seems to be 404'ing now :(

Felipe Coury

I used to use Ad-Aware, but the new(-er) version was so damned intrusive (ran at start-up and wouldn't work any other way) that I removed it. In the same fashion that ZoneAlarm got too big for its britches and became a PITA to use, Ad-Aware has outlived its usefulness.

skh.pcola

Still an SE user here. I didn't like how 2007 looked and worked. Too many disabled buttons, why can't they just leave it out? Feels like crippled ware. Ate too much resources.

I'm sticking with SE even if i have to manually update it, if 2008 is still like that.

googeling

@ghotli: I respectfully disagree. SB and Ad-aware are useful for folks who aren't so techy. Unless you are familiar with the programs/processes that should or should not be there, you'll have no idea what to do with hijack this. You could post it on a forum, but the back on forth response time will take you longer than just running them.

I recommend that people just use the scheduling feature built-in to spybot to run once a week or something. that's what I do, and I don't have any problems with spyware.

qrius

@Kevin Purdy

The Ad-Aware beta can be downloaded from MajorGeeks (www.majorgeeks.com). They even provide the installation key, so you don't need to register on the Ad-Aware site.

dre12n

FYI - no longer 404ing.

Xanderificus

@skh.pcola: Same here.

Capone

When I see praise for one antivirus (or similar) that caught a virus or trojan that other antivirus missed, I now suspect that it was likely a false positive.

irv

I've seen posts on various sites now that ad-aware and SB are yesterday's apps. A lot of people seem to be recommending Spyware terminator and super antispyware.

hasbeen

I might be in Vista and Ubuntu lala land, but i have not ran into a whole lot of problems with Vista and any spyware. With Vista's decent built in firewall, public/private network settings and long ago switching to firefox and opensource products, I haven't seen real traces of spyware. Where are people picking this junk up these days? If did see a huge upswing in spyware, I'd have no problems switching my remaining windows machines to Ubuntu.

prosonik