Ok, so Ad-Aware demanded I upgrade to the new version, which I did...

Started a FULL scan last night on my drives, and NINE HOURS FIFTY-FOUR MINUTES later, it's finished....but then takes even more time, about an hour before I cancelled it, and shut it off, to delete 3 cookies, add 1 false-positive to ignore, and quarantine 1 infection...

FRACK ME!
AVG did this some years ago. turned a 30 minute scan into 4 hours...but TEN HOURS? That's not only taking the piss, it's taking the piss, smacking you int he face with a wet kipper and jumping on your 'nads.
Time to go looking at the alternatives, methinks.

I've had a few issues like that with Ad-Aware too, though not nearly as bad as that. It isn't a new thing with the anti-virus programs I use though. Must be something with my computer.

You might want to consider that many viruses and malware will attempt to 'defend' themselves from scans, and so if your PC is infected then it may be attacking the scan and causing it to slow down.

Then again, I could just be talking out my arse.

The False-Positive is TOEE.exe - not an infection.
The actual infection was actually a test file and very safe. - I use it to see what scanners find stuff, and what scanners miss stuff. There's a few websites around that host these files for you to download.
Cookies are cookies - little text files that track your website history

In other words, yes I am talking out my arse. ;)

No, it's just that I'm not really a computer noob. You made some valid assumptions for basic users experiencing this....

It is annoying either way, though. I really liked Ad-Aware, like I used to like AVG....the more they soup up the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drains.

They've released an upgrade that fails miserably :(

Think of a Virus scan as a war going on in the hardrive, the Viruses are the rouge Army and your Anti Virus software is the Un Peacekeeping Army. Whilst the Pc user is the Civilian Casuality if the Virus destroys your Machine.