Ad-Aware 8.1.0 was released yesterday, and I wanted to install it to resolve several problems with my existing installation. I used Revo Uninstaller to uninstall Ad-Aware 2008 Pro. I had not used Revo before, and I was impressed with how thorough it was at completely removing the program. As it turned out, it was a bit too good. It found pieces in my Registry and several folders on my hard drive from even earlier versions of Ad-Aware that had been left by previous uninstallations. Specifically, it found pats of my old Ad-Aware 2007 Pro program. I let Revo remove them.

When I rebooted my system, I found I had a new problem. AutoCheck went through checking my hard drives normally, but then posted a message saying, "lsdelete program not found - skipping AUTOCHECK". From another formum I found that the ls part of lsdelete stands for LavaSoft. "lsdelete.exe is a Lavasoft file. Lsdelete.exe is related to Lavasoft Boot Cleaner." It is specific to Ad-Aware 2007, and with the last vestiges of my old 2007 program removed, AutoCheck could not find the program. From both this forum and others I found how to resolve the problem, but with warnings of dire consequences if I do it wrong. The fix is to delete part of a value in the Registry, but to "delete only the words "autocheck lsdelete" and nothing else or your system may not boot. You'd have to boot off the XP install disk and restore from the registry backup you created."

There are two keys in my Registry that contain lsdelete, and both have the same wording for their values.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet003\Control\Session Manager
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager

Both keys have the value for BootExecute set as autocheck autochk * autocheck lsdelete autocheck lsdelete autocheck lsdelete. My question is what specifically do I delete? Should my edited value read:

autocheck autochk *

only?

Thanks,

Tony

Umm. well I think they could both be deleted, but to be safe just delete the one you are sure about - if this solves the problem then your ok.

However, if you install 8.1 you should find that the problem is also solved, since lsdelete will be reinstalled.

Casey

I already have 8.1.0 installed, which is a wicked nice program, btw. The installation didn't change the problem. Although Ad-Aware is installed in a different partition on my hard drive than the default partition C, I don't think that is the problem. as long as the location of lsdelete.exe is registered with Windows. My thinking now is that the lsdelete refference is entered three times in a row in each key value, so maybe deleting two entries in each value would fix the problem.

Otherwise, do I need to fix an entry in the Registry that tells AutoCheck where to find lsdelete.exe?

Tony

Yeah I only have it once, so delete two

Casey

Fixed


That didn't work. lsdelete.exe still could not be found at Windows boot-up. However, I read the following on another forum —


On my system Lsdelete.exe is located in J:/Forensics & Security Programs/Ad-Aware. I placed a copy of it into C:/Windows/System32, then rebooted.

NO error message!

Perhaps the Ad-Aware installation program should place a copy there, too.

Tony

Interesting, I have lsdelete located in both places. Maybe Ad-Aware didn't do this when custom installed to J: instead of C:

Indeed that is interesting!

Anyhow, glad you fixed it - I'll close this topic now.

Casey