Labs

Lavasoft's Ad-Aware is a very popular free utility for removing spyware. It used to be included in Google's Google Pack, which is a free collection of essential utilities. It has now been replaced with a limited version of Spyware Doctor, possibly because the latter provides some real-time protection. The free version of Ad-Aware does not provide real-time protection. For that, you'll need to pay between £13 and £20 for either the Plus or Professional version.

Because it does not scan in real time, Ad-Aware SE Personal failed to detect any of the spyware as we downloaded it to the target system. Running

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a manual scan was a relatively futile exercise, too, as the program found only eight per cent of the spyware. Installing some of the spyware files did not generate any alerts, although running the scanner did find evidence of some infections.

Removing spyware using this product requires multiple reboots and an element of finger-crossing. It is impossible for regular users to know for sure if any anti-spyware or anti-virus program has fully removed an infection, so the best you can expect is for the program to list a load of problems and then delete them. After this, if the system runs faster and does not display annoying adverts, you have to assume that it is clean. That is a dangerous assumption, though.

This is a clean-up tool, useful only after you realise that your system is infected. The spyware problem has grown so fast that we don't believe you should rely on this type of protection any more. You might find this utility handy when resurrecting an infected PC, perhaps to save your files before reinstalling Windows, but it's not suitable for keeping a system up and running over a period of time. For that, you need a fully featured anti-spyware program with real-time protection.