BleepingComputer.com: Ad Aware problem

Hello. Can someone please help me with this Ad Aware problem?

I've used the Zone Alarm firewall for a couple of months and have seen many people say that Sygate and Kerio are better, so I downloaded/installed Sygate. After a couple of hours of trying to figure it out, I uninstalled it. Now my Ad Aware will only scan so far and grinds to a halt...always stopping at

C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\XScanResult

I navigated to that and it is something named $L2142.TMP

I have no idea what that is and it won't let me open it either.

I tried uninstalling and redownloading Ad Aware...still the same thing. I've ran Spybot and AVG and they work fine. I've deleted all my temporary files. I don't know what else to do and I need my Ad Aware back.

Can someone help me please?

Scan in safe mode.
Cheers,
John

Google:

Thanks for the response and the links. I have been searching sites for help with my problem; just not finding what I need.


jgweed:
Thank you, I'll try that.

Re the firewalls - you should only have one firewall running at any time. If you trialled Sygate without uninstalling ZoneAlarm (or at least disabling it) there were probably conflicts between them.

Try using CCleaner to get rid of your temporary files. You can download it here: http://www.ccleaner.com/

Rimmer, on Apr 30 2005, 05:03 AM, said:

Thanks Rimmer, and sorry for the delay...I just now found this topic again.

I've downloaded CCleaner and have read some at their forum...mostly just the beginner's guide because when I saw some posters' worries, I've chickened out.

I've gotten as far as to run the Analyze part and now I'm REALLY scared. It shows that I have 116.9MB to be removed!! I see that some people say to just go ahead and Run Cleaner (they've had no problems with cleaning all that are listed).

Do I just go ahead and Run Cleaner and hope for no problems that are going to frustrate me to no end?

Reassure me? Or tell me that CCleaner is for the advanced techy and I need to study it a whole lot more before attempting to use it??

I'm askeered!!

In looking more closely at the items to be removed, I see that most are cookies and Temporary Internet files--I take care of both every few days usually. Why so many?? Heck, I'm too scared to surf the net much these days!

The ones that scare me are ones like:

C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\......


C:\Program Files\Lavasoft\Ad-Aware SE Personal\defs.ref.old 0.44MB


I can tell that the Ad-Aware one is probably just old definitions, but it's the names of stuff that I USE being in the list, that scares me.

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You would need to post the rest of that for us to be sure what it is, but its most likely a cache or other junk file.

116MB is not at all unusual for CCleaner to mark for deletion. We have a member here that removed 5GB with no consequences other than a faster machine. Windows Disk Cleanup is not a very effective tool to remove junk files from your computer. CCleaner has found and marked for deletion some files that can grow quite large over time such as index.dat files which contain history of your computer use and internet travels. Be sure to close any browser windows when you run CCleaner, or indeed delete from IE>Internet Options.

The only part of CCleaner to be careful with is the issues area which looks for orphaned entries in your registry. There is no real reason to run that unless you have a specific problem that you think may be resolved in this manner.

Gumdrop This only re CCleaner. I may be the member that Leurgy mentioned above. Had a 13GB HD stuffed full, couldn't print 5 pages without a nasty message about drive space. Deleted things I rarely used to get a few hundred MB's more, but that quickly filled with junk. Drove me crazy as I thought I knew what was in there...maybe 5 gigs of music and 2 of photos and documents. Allowing one more for the OS left 5GB unaccounted for. Then BC turned me on to CCleaner. It took all of about 10 seconds for CC to delete the sludge and I suddenly had about 6GB of free space.

I now run CC before each shutdown and it deletes somewhere between 10-20 MB's in just a few seconds.

Good luck and keep posting....that way we all learn things.

Leurgy

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There were actually a whole bunch of those with Mozilla\Firefox--I imagine it is because I did, indeed, have other windows open?

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Does that mean that if I have a Firefox window open, it is going to delete or remove my Firefox browser? Sorry to be so dense, but I just want to be sure of what that means.

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I did absorb and understand that much, at least.

Thank you for the reassurance--I'm going to go for it!

twinsdad

Thank you much for the added reassurance!

One more question before I actually go all the way....your mention of pictures and music.....CC isn't going to clean out stuff like that if I haven't looked at them/opened them for a long time, is it?? AND that brings me to a second question--if I rarely ever use something like, say, Microsoft FrontPage, is CC going to get rid of that too??

I'm almost ready! Thanks guys!!

When you try to delete files with CCleaner or through Internet Options in IE, those files are mostly made up of liittle bits of webpages you visit so that they load faster when you go back again to the same page. If you have a browser open when you try to remove Temporary Internet Files (tif's) those files that are in use by the page you have open won't be removed because they are in use by that page.

I don't use FF but it no doubt has a cache (of tif's) to use much in the same way as described above.

CCleaner is set up in such a way that it knows which files can be removed that are simply taking up space and won't remove any of your programs. It doesn't matter when or if ever you have used those files. It looks at the extension of a file (like .jpg for a picture file) and knows to leave that alone unless its in a temporary folder. It also removes .tmp, .chk, .log, .bak files, things that are unneccessary.

Thanks so much, Leurgy!! I understand. I'm going to go do it now!!