First off ... the one central nugget to the downgrade procedure is to reinstall Ad-Aware / AAW 7.1.0.11 while your internet connection is down. If you want to downgrade and you know where to get AAW 7.1.0.11 then with the tweak I just mentioned you can do it. You don't need to read any further.

Lavasoft Ad-Aware has been useful to me for many years. The current upgrade is Ad-Aware Anniversary Edition / AAW AE / AAW8 which became available on the 20th of January. I find that it does not work well on one of my Windows 2000 machines on which I also run Spybot S&D Tea Timer. I'm not going to go into details.

So I reinstalled the version I upgraded to 45 days ago. That version works well for me.

A few days before AAW AE (AAW8) was released the folks at Lavasoft released an update to AAW 2008 (AAW7). AAW7 went from 7.1.0.11 to 7.1.0.12.

I strongly suspect that the sole change involved with 7.1.0.12 was a "pop-up" screen that asks the proverbial question "Are You Going To Upgrade To AAW AE Today? Or Are You Going To Wait Until Tomorrow?" That pop-up can be silenced with the procedure below.

How to go back to AAW version 7.1.0.11 specifically

You can get Ad-Aware 2008 7.1.0.11 (AAW7) from either MajorGeeks.com and Download.com .

MajorGeeks.com and Download.com are official Lavasoft mirror sites for Ad-Aware. That is documented here ...

http://www.lavasoft.com/company/blog/?m=200610

... and here ...

http://www.lavasoft.com/company/blog/?m=200705

... look on those pages for the word mirror.

The copy of aaw2008.exe that I got on December 4th, 2008 has an MD5 of b91a4536c67c24db4b87b007e4ebe730.

There is probably some way to get it from the Lavasoft website but as you search for it there they push you towards AAW8.

Uninstall AAW8. If you have 7.1.0.12 installed then uninstall that version.

Disconnect from the internet.

Install AAW 7.1.0.11 (run aaw2008.exe). It will attempt to connect to the Lavasoft mother ship and will time out. The install will complete.

Reconnect to the internet.

You might want to exit and then restart AAW7 at this point. I don't think that that is necessary, but it couldn't hurt.

In the main window click the Update button. Any definitions updates that are available will come down. It will display a window that says "There are new software updates available! Would you like to go to the download location?" Click no. If you click yes you will be upgraded to 7.1.0.12 .

The install is complete.

Each time you update your definitions it will ask you about software updates. You need to click no each time. KEEP IN MIND THAT, SOONER OR LATER, AAW 7.1.0.11 WILL NO LONGER BE SUPPORTED.

Keep aaw2008.exe somewhere so you can revert back to it if necessary.

BTW FileHippo keeps a good history of versions available for download and its fast:

http://www.filehippo.com/download_ad-aware/

Question I have is, why bother with older versions since they will probably become ineffective against newer malware?

I would try to figure out the conflict you were having with Spybot or contact its developer. My guess is it had something to do with this:

Both of your points are well taken.

- FileHippo should have a copy of the old version. (Other shareware websites also have the old version.)

- Attempts should be made to resolve why the problems are happening.

This new version of Ad-Aware is a MAJOR upgrade to their software. Some folks are having problems with this new version (not most, but some few are experiencing persistant problems). If they can't fix their problems and they want to continue using Ad-Aware then for the moment a downgrade is the only avenue open. They can try the upgrade to Ad-Aware AE again in a month (re-download). Maybe they will have fixed something on their PC ... maybe Lavasoft will have a newer version that might solve the problem.

Both of the links I gave above should no longer be used. Download.com no longer provides the old version. MajorGeeks unfortunately has a web page that says "Ad-Aware 2008 7.1.0.11" but the download links there lead to version 7.1.0.8 . Bummer.

I found a reference to a URL that points to a location on a Lavasoft download server where a copy of the Ad-Aware 2008 7.1.0.11 installation executable is located. The exe has the same MD5 as the exe that I got from Download.com a month and a half ago. It's the same file. I'm passing that URL on. How long the file will stay on the Lavasoft download server is unknown.

It's version 7.1.0.11 and will provide more protection than the version 7.1.0.8 copy that I got from MajorGeeks.com two days ago.

Here's the URL. Try right click/save.

http://dlserver1.download.lavasoft.com/pub...008/aaw2008.exe

Reason for edit: glitch in the URL

Edited January 31, 200917 yr by mrpete

Thanks mrpete for your consideration of my opinion

I am curious though if you tried doing a custom install of the latest version without that Ad-Watch Live service I pointed out to see if the conflict with Tea Timer goes away?

I just tested a Typical installation of Ad-Aware 2009 8.0.0.0 with Spybot Search & Destroy 1.6.2 in a VMware guest running XP Pro SP3 without problems.

If you want to install without "Ad-Watch Live" click "Customize Installation" on the License Agreement during install.

Alternatively you could install "Ad-Watch Live" but not install Tea Timer.

Again I had no problem with both running but I did get an irrelevant compatibility notice when I started Spybot S&D.

On the particular box that is giving problems I've tried all combinations of:

- having the Ad-Watch Live driver installed or not

- Spybot S&D Tea Timer running or not

I'm leaning away from the theory that Tea Timer and AAW AE are "fighting" at this point. I have something else in mind that may be a conflict. I'll detail that in a PM I'm sending you. I'm also sending a link to a runtime execution profile that I got using IBM Rational PurifyPlus (the Quantify exe does the profiling).

I'd rather not do the diagnosis in this thread.

I'd rather keep this thread for "How can someone who can't solve their problems with AAW AE temporarily downgrade from that version or AAW 2008 7.1.0.12 (with pop-up) to AAW 2008 7.1.0.11 (no pop-up)."