Windows 7 - Ad-Aware

If Windows Defender is running with real-time protection on a machine, what is your opinion about also running Lavasoft's Ad-Aware/Ad-Watch on that machine?

Not good to run two real time protections.

I used to use AdAware but it seems as if it's seen better days and others do the job better.

IIWM I'd use MSE for realtime and also have MBAM, SAS and SpywareBlaster.

I use Malwarebytes and NIS 2011 for my security..

Ad-aware was very good once. But now I feel its total crap.

IMO Its useless in comparison to MBAM, SAS or Hitman pro.

Back in the day Ad-Aware along with Spybot seemd to be the preferred choices. I used both for on demand scanning but once I got the new computer I never bothered with either. Too many better choices now. I did vote "Somewhat useful" as it's probably better than not using anything.

Based on cnet's download numbers many still feel both are good to use. To each their own .

@bru, those numbers at C|Net and other download locations are cumulative. Thus, those numbers include downloads from when AAW was first listed there so I wouldn't advise anyone putting any credence in the download numbers.

Hi, jmm.

As an Administrator with well over 10,000 posts at the original Lavasoft Support Forums (taken off line by then CEO, Ann-Christine Åkerlund), I lost faith in Ad-Aware long ago. As Dinesh indicated, there was a time when it was a good program for removing spyware and adware -- programs like BargainBuddy, BonziBuddy, SahAgent, etc. Anything more difficult required (at that time) Merjin's HijackThis.

Granted, "Team Lavasoft"* had great fun back in the day, working directly with Nicolas Stark and members of Lavasoft Research, but Nic has long been out of the picture. In fact, too few people realize that Lavasoft was acquired in January of this year by Lulu Software (WOT rating of Lulu Software).

Based on a comment posted on my blog post, Surprisingly Little Information on Lavasoft Acquisition, earlier this week, the last of the Lavasoft employees have been eliminated, the Swedish offices will close and programming for Ad-Aware will be done in Ukraine:
*BTW, we're still together and still providing help at another site.

Well, well, well.....thanks for posting this Corinne.

On cnet's site they list last week's downloads. Not sure how those could be cumulative, but I supopose it's possible. Either way like you say I wouldn't read much into what any one else was downloading. I'd do my own research.

Sorry, bru. I hadn't checked the site and know that years ago, all we saw at the various download sites was the total. Its the 372,734,928 figure is cumulative. As to 168,052 downloads, that isn't really a large number in the large picture and doesn't mean that it worked either. LOL