I'll bring this thread back up to post an AdAware observation.

First, I think part of what Katlaughing may have run into before was the a program positioned in "sponsored" part of the results page -- AdWare comes up at the top if one Googles "AdAware." Notice the missing "a" in the name? A lot of people don't, and they end up with another product. The AdWare folks plan it that way. If you load that stuff you have to work to get it out. There is a similar bogus program that comes up if you search on Spybot Search&Destroy.

Now to AdAware. I took it out last year because it was slowing down my computer a lot. They upgraded to that version and that version was not helpful; to the contrary.

Last week I thought I'd give it another try. My setup is an HP Pavilion/XPpro/various browsers in use. I use AVG, Spybot Search&Destroy, WinPatrol, Kerio Firewall. So adding AdAware was covering one part of the spectrum, ads that seem to be in your face.

The ads are still in my face, and IE slowed to the point of hanging and entering the "not responding" phase. FireFox handles AdAware better. I just now went in and disabled the "real time" ad blocking, meaning AdAware would be there for occasional scans. IE is back up to speed. The question is, is AdAware useful if you use it only for scans every week?

The short answer is No. This week I scanned with AdAware and there are a couple of problems. It shows you the name of a cookie it detects as a problem but it doesn't show you the path and it doesn't let you deal individually with each cookie. The library where I work uses cookies on our web page to keep track of logged on institutional users so you don't need to keep logging on. I want to keep that one, but it won't let me. There are a few others, like my Mudcat cookie, that I'd prefer to leave in place, but if I can't see the path and what browser program loaded it, it isn't much use. I told it to "ignore" all of those cookies in that first scan. This isn't helpful. So I'm going to get rid of AdAware again.

SRS