Nancy, Ad-Aware finally finished its scan after six hours or so, finding and removing 55 "bad objects" out of 440,000. Looking at the log, they were just the normal junk cookies that AOL and other web sites hang on your computer. And the Pro version of Ad-Aware is probably free for a while and then they require that it be paid for. So I'd stick with the free version. If your hard drive is crowded, I think you'd be OK uninstalling Ad-Aware, as your other security seems to be adequate. Woody ============================= Bogus Woody writes: Nancy, Although I have Norton Internet Security, I installed Ad-Aware to see how it behaved and if it could find anything Norton didn't. So far Ad-Aware has been scanning 4.6 hours and scanned 340,000 "objects" and found 0 (bad) objects on my C drive. It is now scanning my D drive, so I have approx another 4 hours of scanning to go. What that says is that the long scanning time on your computer was normal. Also, when you saw your computer boot up on its own, it had probably reached the end of its installation of Ad-Aware and restarted on its own as required. Mine also rebooted on its own after installation. With all of the security that you exercise on your computer, it looks like the slowness culprit is the 512 megs of memory. With that, any scanning or searching going on in the background is going to make your computer appear to have frozen. When the background activity, the computer should speed up again to normal. Another 512 megs of memory would make a big improvement. If Ad-Aware doesn't find any bad "objects", or maybe one or two mild ones such as cookies that your other security didn't find, I'd uninstall Ad-Aware. But it was worth having Ad-Aware check out how effective your other security is. Woody ================== In msg 12/10/2009 6:50AM CST, Nlpakkala@aol.com writes: Woody, I did empty the recycle bin and I do often go thru and eliminate the cookies. I used the link you gave me and downloaded the free version of their adware program. At the moment I am performing a scan with it (I'm using my husband's laptop to write this). It took 15 minutes this morning after turning it on before I could use it. It also mentioned the free Pro version, is that better? Does it scan automatically in the background or do I have to perform a scan manually? Their may be some other issues too as before I downloaded the program I think the computer was having a "heart attack", it just froze up and even the alt.control delete didn't work. Eventually the task manager box did come up but not willingly and it kept blinking. We eventually pulled the plug and restarted it after a few minutes. Earlier in the afternoon when no one was using the computer but I happened to be walking by the computer room, I noticed that it was restarting all by itself. I don't think that has ever happened before. I'm not expecting you to be able to answer all these problems for me but thought I would mention them anyway. The scan has been in progress now for 14 minutes and hasn't found any problems yet. Oh yes, the AOL spyware box came up this morning and said it was scanning and no items found. It doesn't do that every day though. Nancy ======================== In msg 12/10/2009 2:01AM EST, BogusWoody@aol.com writes: You really ought to dump your recycle bin, esp if you have over 200megs or so in it. And cookies -- it wouldn't hurt to go into that and delete cookies that don't look like they're affiliated with web sites you frequent. Woody