The jump to version x.1 of a program may not seem like particularly big news, but with the release of Ad-Aware Free Antivirus+ 10.1 there is a surprising amount to take in. For anyone who has taken the security step of installing more than one antivirus tool, you should now find that – which Norton and AVG at least – Ad-Aware no longer produces a BSOD, but there have also been more important changes to the engine of this antivirus and firewall tool.

A major concern with any antivirus tool is the impact it has on your system and in the latest release there have been tweak made to the scanning engine that mean that schedule scans are performed faster than in the past. The program has already undergone something of a makeover but there have now been additional improvements made so the app as a whole feels generally snappier – this is in addition to faster scan completion.

Ad-Aware Free Antivirus+ 10.1

On the firewall front, programs that have been deemed as trustworthy are now added to the white-list and there is now better support for 64-bit versions of Windows for both the firewall and antivirus side of the application. Users of Windows 2000 will be disappointed to find that their operating system is no longer supported, and this comes as results of changes that have been made to improve the reliability of system drivers.

A problem that meant multi-user systems were plagued with requests for a license key when switching between accounts has been addressed and the program is now able to detect a wider range of tracking cookies. This minor version increase is a great move forward for Lavasoft, as their famous security software makes increasing steps towards catching up with the competition that overtook it in recent years.

You can find out more and download a free copy of the program by paying a visit to the Ad-Aware Free Antivirus+ 10.1 review page.