Yardbird, The only possible reason for deleting cookies prior to running Ad Aware or some other anti-spyware program, is so it doesn't flag any tracking-cookies as spyware. I've done this too, just to make it easier to determine if Ad Aware or Spybot really find something nasty. I don't want to be told dozens of items were put in quarantine, if they were all just tracking cookies. Alan Yardbird wrote: another? Why would you expect an anti spyware program to turn up spyware once you've deleted some cookies from your cookies folder? I hope my question is clear.