A closer look at the new Ad-Aware 2008 Pro
Lavasoft has just released a major update to their flagship product Ad-Aware. New Ad-Aware 2008 Free can be downloaded from our software section and in this article you can see the look and feel of the Ad-Aware 2008 Pro version.
The Ad-Aware 2008 installation is available in two different types: Standard and Advanced. For the majority of users the Standard type of installation is the best way to go as the Advanced option customizes some mostly non important details.
After the installation, Update Manager takes on and downloads the latest updates to the software.
This is the Ad-Aware 2008 Pro user interface. As you can see from the image below, it is pretty straight-forward and easy to use.
There are three scanning modes. Smart scan checks the critical parts of the system and should find all the malware that is bugging your computer. Full scan expands the search to cookies and MRUs and a Custom scan should be used for targeted scanning.
These are the options that can be setup in the Custom scan.
In Ad-Aware 2008 Pro you can schedule scans to start in specific time periods.
Computer is being scanned and the progress bar is provided in the main screen.
Results window shows all critical objects found during the scanning process.
The LogFile tab offers an insight into the scanning process.
Every discovered object holds some information on what type of malware it is.
Smart scan took about 17 minutes on a Windows XP system with about 30 GBs of data. As you can see from the right part of the following screenshot, software also offers a system restore point.
Ad-Watch is a module located in the software which provides a real time monitor that runs in the background. In Ad-Aware 2008 Pro Ad-Watch is much powerful and works like a charm.
Web update settings provide customization of the definition file upgrading.
With Process Watch the users can browse around the active processes and are able to scan them for malware.
Hosts File Editor graphical user interface.
TrackSweep is a privacy utility inside Ad-Aware 2008 Pro that deletes sensitive information from the popular web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera.
The software has a vast collection of options that can be customized for the best user experience – you can even change the user interface.