Hi everyone/anyone.

I act as an administrator for my mom and dad. They have a well up to date Vista with SP3 with MS Office 2007 and also (taking my advice) use Ad-Aware AE Plus in conjunction with McAfee Internet security suite. Basically, identical setup to mine.

Strange thing is that whenever any of the users (me, my mom or my dad) start Outlook 2007 on their PC, Ad-Watch springs into life with a background scan suggesting that it has detected malicious activity. Quickly scans, nothing detected and all is fine. If I then close Outlook and restart Outlook, the same things happens again and again and again............you get the drift.


Not a big problem, I'm just stumped as to why, and what is making it do this? Deep scans show nothing.

Anyone else ever had this problem? I've done fresh install of Ad-Aware but it makes no difference.

I stress, it only happens when we fire up Outlook.

Since Ad-aware doesn't scan email, but in your case is triggered by execution of Outlook, maybe it's not a problem with Ad-aware but with the Outlook.exe (file corruption or infection). Under Ad-WatchLive! Processes, do you have a hit for the Outlook.exe? If so, allow it and see if it stops Ad-aware from starting (assuming you're convinced nothing malicious has happened to Outlook.exe).

Thanks, I'll give it a go. If need be I'll re-install Outlook and see if the 'problem' disappears.

Ok. I don't have a hit for Outlook.exe. I've also done a 'repair' of MS Office using my CD and this 'problem' still remains.

I'm baffled!

Try disabling McAfee first, temporarily, to see if you can isolate the cause. Another user recently had to uninstall it for Ad-aware to work, although the problem wasn't with Outlook.

Also, in AdWatchLive! settings you can uncheck the Processes module temporarily - if the problem goes away, then it's definitely Ad-aware thinking Outlook is a malicious process (but then it should be in the hit list?).

Right after Outlook triggers Ad-aware, check out the logs: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Lavasoft\Ad-Aware\Logs
Find the log with the current date/time and see what it says.

If all else fails, you could try posting a log in the HJT forum just to see if the system's clean of any malware.