If you're experiencing a 'connection error' when clicking web-update please try updating from the start menu or use one of the workarounds below.

*Go to, C:\Program Files\Lavasoft\Ad-Aware and right click on
AAWService.exe, select properties in popup menu and in the
Compatibility tab. Change the Compatibility mode to "Run this program
in compatibility mode for: Windows XP" , click ‘apply’ then ‘ok’. Do
the same for Ad-AwareAdmin.exe and then retry the web-update.

*Go to Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Services and locate "Lavasoft
Ad-Aware Service". Stop the Service (if started) and then right
click/properties. Under Logon, check "Allow service to interact with desktop", click OK and restart the service and then retry the web-update.

Effective March 31, 2009, technical support and Definitions File updates for the following products will be discontinued:

Ad-Aware SE Plus
Ad-Aware SE Professional
Ad-Aware SE Enterprise

As Definitions File threat updates for Ad-Aware SE will not be issued after this date, please upgrade to the latest version of Ad-Aware – Ad-Aware Anniversary Edition – in order to stay protected from online threats.

Please follow the upgrade instructions below.

Ad-Aware SE Plus/Professional Customers:
If you have a valid Ad-Aware SE Plus or Professional license, you are eligible to upgrade to Ad-Aware Anniversary Edition free of charge.

To upgrade your software please contact us by logging-in to the Lavasoft Support Center.

You will receive a Serial Number and instructions on how to download and activate your license of Ad-Aware Anniversary Edition.

Ad-Aware SE Enterprise Customers:
If you have valid Ad-Aware SE Enterprise licenses, you are eligible to update to Ad-Aware Enterprise 2.1 free of charge.

Please download Ad-Aware Enterprise 2.1 by logging-in to the Lavasoft Support Center at http://www.lavasoft.com/support/supportcenter and selecting the “Your Licenses” menu.
To receive a Support Center password reminder, please visit: http://www.lavasoft.com/support/supportcenter/request_password.php

If you need a new license, please visit our Ad-Aware product pages.

When the License has expired, Ad-Aware will revert to the free edition. If your license time has not expired but the program has reverted to the Free edition, first please reboot your computer. If the software is still not activated correctly please re-enter your serial number in the 'Manage License' screen. You can get your serial number by logging into Lavasoft Support Center here (click). If you receive any error message when trying to re-activate the software or you need to transfer your license to a new PC please contact our support team through the Lavasoft Support Center here (click).  Please include the hardware fingerprint and your license information, which can be found in the 'Manage License' screen.

THE AD-AWARE ARCHITECTURE Ad-Aware consists of two main parts, the Service and the Graphical User Interface (GUI).

The GUI is the part of the program a user sees and needs in order to interact with the program itself; it contains menus, buttons and other controls that are necessary for a user to run the program. User action is passed from the GUI down to the Service, which contains the core functionality of the program.

The Service executes the action, and then reports the results back to the GUI, where it is presented to the user. What Is a Service? Services are Windows applications that are launched at system startup and then run in the background, not visible to the user.

What is the Benefit of a Service-Based Approach to Malware Removal? Malware that emerges today is increasingly complex, displaying wildly varying behavior and operating on many levels in the system. In order to stay a step ahead of these ever-changing security threats, an anti-spyware tool needs to be more powerful, multi-faceted and flexible than ever before.

The implementation of Ad-Aware as a Service facilitates this needed power and flexibility since a service runs with elevated rights on the system. This means that the user can work in user-mode while the Service maintains the elevated rights it needs in order to properly detect and remove malware infections.

How Does This Affect Resource Use? During a scan, the CPU use of the Service will vary parts of the scan are labor-intensive and require a lot of processing power, which can make the computer's performance sluggish. Other parts require less computing power and have little impact on the overall performance of the system. When the service is idle, virtually no CPU power is required, making the impact on system performance negligible.

As for memory use, the service does require a bit of memory, most of which is needed for storing the threats in the Detection Database. It is important to note, however, that when the Service is not in use, the lion's share of this memory is paged to the Swap file. In non-technical terms, this means that the hard drive is used to store data that is not currently in use, and then retrieves the data when needed, which makes the actual working memory (RAM) available for other applications.

If you are online behind a proxy server, you will need to have your proxy server settings correctly configured to update Ad-Aware.

Go to Settings -> Updates and click proxy settings.

Tick the box beside "Enable Proxy"

Enter your proxy server address (in the format, proxyaddress:portnumber ), your username and password and click 'Ok'

When the Ad-Aware Tray icon has an exclamation mark over it, this means that an Ad-Watch update has being downloaded but the computer has not being restarted for Ad-Watch to be fully updated.

Restart your computer to complete the update

The scan log file is a detailed information log about the scan.There are two ways to create a scan log file.

From the Main Status screen click  'Statistics' and select the scan which you require the log file for from the scan statistics drop down menu.

Click on the "Export Scan Log" and save the scan log file as a text file to your computer.

Or-

After a scan is completed on the 'Scan Summary Screen',
Click on the "Export Scan Log" and save the scan log file as a text file to your computer.

Changing the skin in Ad-Aware will not affect the functionlity of the software.

Switching to a different skin will just change the graphical features like buttons and colours and the general appearance.
The skin setting can be accessed in "Advanced mode", via the "Settings" button and clicking on the "Customize" tab. Select your skin from the drop down menu list.