Malwarebytes AdwCleaner 7.0.8.0

It is a fact that people generally love free stuff, including software. However, there is hardly anything that is totally free. At best, someone else caters to the cost of what you get for free. When it comes to software, unfortunately, you will pay the cost indirectly in more ways than you bargained for, such as by unwittingly installing unwanted programs like toolbars and adware. Removing these programs is often challenging, but you can use AdwCleaner to simplify the process.

AdwCleaner Features:

• Scan and remove unwanted toolbars, adware and other Potentially Unwanted Programs or PUPs
• Compatible with popular Web browsers, including Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox
• Provides scan and clean reports
• Quarantine manager

Using AdwCleaner

AdwCleaner is a portable application that launches as soon as you accept the terms and conditions. You only accept the terms the first time you run the application. Although the cleaner is portable, it creates a folder where it stores reports, backups and quarantine.

The simple user interface has buttons marked Scan, Clean, Report and Uninstall under 'Actions' and Donate under 'Other.' Below them are tabs displaying the areas the cleaner scans while a progress bar rests above the buttons.

When we clicked the Scan button, AdwCleaner searched folders, files, tasks, infected shortcuts and registry. Once the scan was complete, the application waited for us to take action by unchecking elements we did not want to remove and then clicking the Clean button. We had to click on the tabs to display relevant search results.

AdwCleaner creates backup copies you can use to restore deleted files from the Quarantine Manager, which you access via the Tools menu.

Clicking the Clean button displayed a prompt to save all work because the application would close all open programs to effectively delete adware and other PUPs. Once the cleaning process was complete, AdwCleaner displayed useful information giving tips on how to avoid the PUPs. It then restarted our system to complete the removal process once we had clicked on the OK button. However, the computer seemed to take forever on the screen displaying 'Restarting,' and we had to forcefully close it using the power button and make a fresh boot, yet we had unchecked everything, which meant nothing was deleted.

We then did a re-scan and chose to delete adware, and the application effectively removed them. After rebooting, AdwCleaner displayed its report, which included the cleaner version and our system information.

Conclusion

AdwCleaner is an effective tool for removing Potentially Unwanted Programs. We used it to delete adware and remove unwanted toolbars easily.