There is a bug in Ad-Aware that can cause users to receive the message “lsDelete program not found – Skipping Autocheck” (that is Lsdelete, not Isdelete or 1sdelete) while their computer is booting. This seems to occur after the user has uninstalled Ad-Aware. While it presents no immediate problems (other than a slight start-up delay), it can cause issues with disk imaging and other maintenance programs. The solution involves editing the registry, which can be dangerous. If you don’t know what you are doing, ask for help. Here are the steps (for Windows XP and Vista) to correct the problem:
- Click on the Start button, then click on the start menu item called ‘Run’. Alternatively you can hold down the Windows key on your keyboard and press ‘r’.
- In it’s text field type in REGEDIT, and click on the OK button
- In the Registry Editor, on the File Menu bar click on Edit, then on Find, and type in BootExecute (and search for it)
- Once BootExecute is located, and selected (highlighted), on the File Menu bar click on Edit, then Modify
- In the Value Data box, manually delete ONLY the entry called: autocheck lsdelete
- Exit the Registry Editor
- Restart the computer and all will be back to normal
There may be more than one entry that contains “autocheck lsdelete.” If so, you will need to delete all of them. DO NOT delete any of the other “autocheck” entries.
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***UPDATE: I’ve contacted Lavasoft (the maker of Ad-Aware) and they say the problem is fixed in the latest (non-beta) versions of the software. If you are getting the error message, try installing the latest version of Ad-Aware, then uninstalling it. If that works for you, please post a comment.