Talk about easy and effective! This is one of the oldest anti-malware programs available and it has expanded quite a bit in its effort to protect your computer. Not only that, it has a button in the bottom left-hand corner that gives you a choice as to whether you want to run the program in simple or advanced mode. In simple mode the program simply does everything it is supposed to automatically from scans to updates. You don’t have to set a thing. In advanced mode, you control it.
The program was extremely slow both in downloading (I have a moderate speed connection) and in updating. It also needed to reboot which is not that common anymore. I noticed when it came up that my regular anti-virus did not start up as it usually does, but when I checked it I discovered it had not been uninstalled. Ad-Aware is now doing virus protection as well.
The interface consists of 4 areas- main, scan, watch, and extras. Main includes web update and links to scan and watch.
Scan gives you a choice of three different types of scan. The smart scan includes critical areas and is fairly fast. Full does your entire drive(s), and profile lets you choose which areas to scan. You can also schedule a scan, and you will find quarantined items in this area as well as an ignore list.
Adwatch live real-time protection actively blocks malicious processes from infecting your computer. It blocks just about every kind of bad stuff there is out there, and it also removes every threat it finds. It does this with two interesting technical processes which in essence analyze parts of known malware and alerts the software when these parts occur in new combinations. The freeware version does not include the deeper areas of files, registry, and the network.
Tracksweep allows you to remove cookies, cache, history, and more.