How to Uninstall Ad-Aware

Ad-Aware is an antispyware program from Lavasoft and is specifically designed to protect your computer from adware. Adware are malicious programs that are responsible for displaying unsolicited and annoying advertisements pop-ups on your screen. In case you want to upgrade your Ad-Aware software or wish to install a different piece of antispyware software, then you can easily uninstall Ad-Aware either through built-in uninstaller or Add or Remove Programs utility.

How to Uninstall Ad-Aware

Remove Ad-Aware Using the Built-In Uninstaller

  1. Click the Start menu, and then click All Programs.
  2. Click Lavasoft.
  3. Click Ad-Aware folder.
  4. Click the Uninstall Ad-Aware icon to run the built-in removal tool.
  5. Follow the on-screen instructions.
  6. Restart your computer when the uninstallation process completes.

Uninstall Ad-Aware Using the Add or Remove Programs Utility

  1. Click the Start menu, click Control Panel, and then click Add or Remove Programs.
  2. Locate and select Ad-Aware on the currently installed programs list, and then press Uninstall.
  3. Follow the on-screen instructions.
  4. Restart Windows when the uninstallation process completes.

Alternatively, you can also uninstall Ad-Aware from your Windows computer by double-clicking the unwise.exe file. Typically, this file is located in C:\Program Files\Lavasoft\Ad-Aware.

After you uninstall Ad-Aware or any other program, it is imperative that you run a thorough registry scan to ensure that all the entries related to the uninstalled program are also deleted from the registry. The easiest and most effective way to do this is by using a reliable registry cleaning software, such as RegGenie.

“Can’t find Install.log” error has occurred while uninstalling Ad-Aware – What is the solution?

If you are unable to uninstall Ad-Aware using the aforementioned methods, and instead receive an error message, such as “can’t find Install.log“, then perform the following tasks to uninstall manually:

Task 1 – Delete Your Lavasoft Folder

Locate and delete your Lavasoft folder. Typically, the path is C:\Program Files\Lavasoft\Ad-Aware.

Next, delete any desktop shortcut icon for Ad-Aware, as well as any Lavasoft Ad-Aware link in your start menu. Further, delete the Lavasoft folder in C:\Documents and Settings\USER NAME\Application Data\Lavasoft\.

Task 2 – Delete Ad-Aware Registry Entries

Important: The steps illustrated below require you to edit the Windows registry. Take care to perform the following steps as they are shown; incorrectly modifying the Windows registry can have serious implications. Further, back up the registry before editing. This way you can restore the registry to its previous working state if a complication occurs later. You may use a piece of reliable registry cleaning software, such as RegGenie, to back up Windows registry and to perform other essential maintenance tasks.

  1. Run the regedit command to open the Registry Editor window.
  2. Locate and delete the following registry entries in the left-pane of the registry editor window:

    3. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Lavasoft\Ad-Aware
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Ad-aware

  3. Exit Registry Editor.
  4. Restart your computer.

In case you are unable to manually uninstall Ad-Aware, then you may use a reliable third-party uninstaller tool, such as Perfect Uninstaller, to forcefully uninstall Ad-Aware and other unwanted software from your Windows computer.