There’s a problem with Ad-Aware 6 build 181 that causes the automatic update process to freeze after downloading 5 per cent of the reference file.
(Apparently somebody mucked up the reference file name because Ad-Aware is attempting to download a reference file from 2002.)
The workaround, as described in the Ad-Aware forum, is simple enough: manually download the 656kb ZIP file containing the reflist.ref file and extract it to the Ad-Aware folder. Launch Ad-Aware and you should see the latest reference file loaded.
