Ad-Aware 2007 Woes

Digerati · #1 (**permalink**) 16-06-2007, 06:16 AM

For those who have, or are thinking of downloading and installing the new Ad-Aware 2007, beware! Apparently, in Lavasoft's desire to make Ad-Aware 2007 Vista compatible, they have re-written the program so that a service called aawservices.exe, that consumes from 21 to 30Mb of system resources, is set to run every time you boot. This service is needed for Ad-Aware 2007 to run. Sadly, Lavasoft has elected to keep the service running, even after you exit the program, even after a reboot. Lavasoft's excuse is the service is needed for new features. Fine, but that does not explain why the service needs to load at every boot, nor why it won't stop upon exit. Realizing Ad-Aware 2007 Free does NOT support real-time scanning, there is absolutly no reason to keep the service running.

I realize many new programs have gone to using services for security reasons including the new a² Anti-Malware and AVG Anti-Spyware. And in those cases, the services remain running too. But a² for example, drops down to a tolerable ~135Kb, not 21 - 30 Mb!

Neal · #2 (**permalink**) 16-06-2007, 05:01 PM

Thanks for the heads up.

Digerati · #3 (**permalink**) 16-06-2007, 06:01 PM

Yeah, and I really hate to "look a gift horse in the mouth". When something is free, we can only expect to get our money's worth (a crippled or dummied down version), but in this case, with that many resources tied up for no apparent reason, that has a "negative" effect on our system - probably not significant for those with 1Gb or more of RAM, but for folks with limited technical skills and on a budget, and with systems with 512Mb or less of RAM, eating up 5% or more of their resources needlessly does have a crippling affect.