Ad Watch?

[Cretemonster]

I really dont kow where to post this question?!

The Ad Watch feature in Ad Aware has proved to be most frustrating while trying to clean up a HijackThis log!

After being disabled and the PC cleaned up,Once Ad watch is renabled,the 04s that have been removed tend to show up again!

Is there any solution other than the one I am currently using,which is Uninstalling and Reinstalling Ad Aware??

[Corrine]

Hi, Cretemonster!  Long time no see.  Hope you're doing well.

As to A-W, yes, there is a solution.  I personally do not recommend using the "automatic" setting with Ad-Watch.  The reason is simple.  I wish to have control of what goes on my machine.  When I am installing software that requires a registry change, I am prompted by Ad-Watch to accept or block that change.  If I were not installing software, then I would also want to know if something were attempting to alter my registry. 

From the Help file:

You can lock the startup sections of your registry, block possible and actual browser hijack attempts, block suspicious processes, lock executable file associations, Block malicious cookies, block Pop-ups, and uses the all new CSI technology to protect you from unknown variants as well. Even if Ad-Watch is turned off and something DOES install onto your system, it will recognize it and will kill the process as soon as it has seen it when turned back on. Emphasis added

I see the automatic setting as useful in the corporate environment.  However, since home users do use that setting, what you need to do is turn off that setting before cleaning to prevent Ad-Watch from re-enabling what was disabled with HJT.  To disable the real-time monitoring with Ad-Watch:

   1. Right click on the Ad-Watch icon in the system tray.
   2. At the bottom of the screen there will be two checkable items called "Active" and "Automatic".

          Active: This will turn Ad-Watch On\Off without closing it
          Automatic: Suspicious activity will be blocked automatically

   3. Uncheck both of those boxes.