Ad-Aware is a VERY good utility. But, one must be careful when using it.
BEFORE actually deleting ANYTHING, put it in quarantine (the default unless
you changed it) for a reasonable period of time. (A Reasonable period of
time can vary depending how often you use your system, and the software
installed on it) That way, if a problem arises, one can Restore the object
whose removal caused the problem. NOT ALL of the objects that Ad-Aware
finds in a scan should be removed. Something seemingly innocuous like a
data miner, which I quarantined, caused Family Lawyer not to execute.
Thankfully I had quarantined the object, and by clicking the: Open
Quarantine List on the main Ad-Aware window, selecting the object, then
Restoring it, easily got the use of the program back again. If you
quarantined objects instead of deleting them: Restore the objects that you
quarantined one by one, rebooting after restoring each object, then trying
to run AOL, until you restore an object or objects that allow AOL to run
without the error. Then you can send the OTHER restored objects back to
quarantine until you are absolutely sure that removing them doesn't
interfere with anything else on your system. There are programs that I
might go months without running, so my quarantined objects might remain
quarantined for a long time. But that doesn't really matter much, since
they don't take up much space, and it beats the alternative of learning
months later that I had deleted a needed object, and that I don't have the
original install file or CD to be able to fix the problem. If you did not
quarantine the items that Ad-Aware found, but instead deleted them (very bad
idea to change the default "Automatically Quarantine Objects Before Removal"
setting, or to delete quarantined objects too soon unless the object is a
well known troublemaker), then you will probably have to uninstall AOL, then
reboot your system and reinstall AOL.
