I dont get it...

[tmh88]

I formatted my hd today, re-installed windows, and in this order i re-installed my drivers/software. First I installed my videocard drivers, then my soundcard, norton anti-virus, and then my wireless pci adapter.

Alright now heres the werid part. I went to lavasoft.com to download adaware. That is the only website I went to after i formatted my pc, so then it asked me to run adaware to check for stuff, so i clicked ok just to see if it actually would find anything. And it did, it found 13 items and the only website that I went to was adawares actual website. I dont get it, how else could I have gotten these 13 items. From the discription in adaware it said they were tracking cookies (i forget the names). any ideas

[Gargoyle]

Maybe it's clear to someone else, but I'm stumped. I'll further demonstrate my lack of knowledge with some lame guesses: :D

driver install files were somehow corrupted with spyware?
the files ad-aware found are actually harmless, or perhaps mis-identified?
there's a part of your hard drive that doesn't get formatted when you format it?

[Dexter]

Can you post the report with the cookies data? I'd be interested to see it.

I just cleared cookies in IE, and then duplicated your process as best I could, but I had to make the following assumptions:

1 - as you just re-installed everything, I assumed IE was set to the default MSN home page

2 - I assumed you used the search engine at MSN to search for the Ad Aware download page.

3 - I assumed you downloaded the free version of Ad Aware, which means you had to click either on the Download.com link or the PC World link.

Using that method, and clicking the Download.com link, I got 7 cookies. Using the PC World link I got 10 cookies, because they use more ad related tracking cookies.

Depending on your region, the MSN home page may have inserted one or two more tracking cookies as well for ad banners, etc. 13 cookies, depending on how you got there, is not unreasonable for a short internet session like that, if any of the sites were ad-sponsored.

Dexter...