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Peter Stahl
05-04-2005, 6:55 AM
I have a problem with spybot. It will go through the seach part but when it's time to destroy it hangs up. I tried just deleting/destroying one thing at a time, no go. Tried it in safe mode, still no go. Any suggestions as to what to try next? PC is a P4 with Windows XP Pro.

thanks, Pete

Karl Laustrup
05-04-2005, 7:14 AM
I've been having the same problem, Peter. I'm using XP Home. I haven't really worried about it too much as I'm also running Ad Aware and Counter Spy.

Counter Spy, while it is a subscription [$20 download for a year], was highly touted in a recent issue of PC World. It runs in the background and I have it set to scan once a day. It picks up cookies and cleans them from my system.

I run the Ad Aware once a week and it does seem to pick up a few that Counter Spy misses, but I wouldn't be without Counter Spy.

My 2 cents. I'm am not affiliated with any of the above mentioned items, just a satisfied user.

John Hart
05-04-2005, 7:21 AM
John Miliunas told me about Microsoft's new Anti Spyware app so I installed it to see how it performed. It's one of their good ones. I'm so happy with it that I dumped Spybot. It has a much smoother operation and handles all the scunge that Spybot handles. (I'm XP Pro too)

Peter Stahl
05-04-2005, 9:22 AM
I've been having the same problem, Peter. I'm using XP Home. I haven't really worried about it too much as I'm also running Ad Aware and Counter Spy.

Counter Spy, while it is a subscription [$20 download for a year], was highly touted in a recent issue of PC World. It runs in the background and I have it set to scan once a day. It picks up cookies and cleans them from my system.

I run the Ad Aware once a week and it does seem to pick up a few that Counter Spy misses, but I wouldn't be without Counter Spy.

My 2 cents. I'm am not affiliated with any of the above mentioned items, just a satisfied user.

Karl,

Thanks for info. I downloaded Ad Aware and ran it several times until nothing else was detected. Next I ran Spybot again and it found 5 items (found 31 it could delete before) and this time it deleted them but it still took a minute or two. Will try the MS one mentioned below to see if it finds anything.

Pete

Peter Stahl
05-04-2005, 9:23 AM
John Miliunas told me about Microsoft's new Anti Spyware app so I installed it to see how it performed. It's one of their good ones. I'm so happy with it that I dumped Spybot. It has a much smoother operation and handles all the scunge that Spybot handles. (I'm XP Pro too)


John,

Thanks for the reply. Will give the MS Anti Spyware thing a try.

Pete

Jim Becker
05-04-2005, 10:34 AM
The one thing I didn't like about the MS product (and I had the same problem with PestPatrol) was that it was too brutal on certain cookies...deleting things that were valid and causing angst when I went to log into certain sites I use frequently. Otherwise, it works great.

Mike Ramsey
05-04-2005, 10:35 AM
John,

Thanks for the reply. Will give the MS Anti Spyware thing a try.

Pete

Peter, have been using MS for a couple of months now and it seems to be
working pretty good. The auto update feature is great also. Deleted all other
spy remover stuff.

Jamie Buxton
05-04-2005, 11:19 AM
On my machine, Spybot now is taking a long time to do the deletion step --- like several minutes. (I have no idea why it should be doing that. The computer is only two years old, and has plenty of performance at everything else it does.) At any rate, try launching the Spybot deletion, and then go eat dinner or something. Come back in a half hour and see if you're still hung.

Bob Nieman
05-04-2005, 1:54 PM
It is a very good idea to have multiple programs. No spyware remover does it all. M/S bought the company that had the best product on the market, so theirs is probably the one to start with, but some of the other programs are worth having as well.

You might try using a firefox as a browser as well instead of IE. If something fishy is going on it will tell you.

My father in law is generally pretty savvy, but it was obvious to me that he had spyware on his computer. I downloaded two proigrams, removed what I could and the internet checkers program he plays wouldn't work. He reinstalled the program along with the spyware that came with it....

Jim Becker
05-04-2005, 3:10 PM
Recent columns by writers for the trades and PC magazines have indicated that FireFox is not necessarily the panacea that some folks make it out to be security wise. In fact, there have been a number of patches recently to deal with serious issues...if you have not applied them/upgraded, you are vulnerable. One recent column even suggested that statistically, IE is more secure than even as long as folks have upgraded WinXP to SP2 level and have applied all the current patches. What I'm suggesting here is...don't think that you are invulnerable just because you choose to use alternative software applications! All software has it's problems...'nature of the beast.

Peter Stahl
05-04-2005, 3:44 PM
I think I got the little buggers. I hit it with Ad Aware 3 times then MS Anti Spyware and Spybot for good measure. What was happening besides more popup windows than normal was that IE when Maximized would not fill the screen. Can't say for sure it was spyware that did but it is normal now that I ran the Anti-Spyware program. Thanks for all the tips and helpful info.

Pete

Tony Falotico
05-04-2005, 6:53 PM
Peter, I had a problem with spybot, I removed it (using add/remove programs), downloaded it again and reinstalled it, works fine. I think they upgraded it and the old version wouldn't accept the new updates.

Peter Stahl
05-05-2005, 6:16 AM
Peter, I had a problem with spybot, I removed it (using add/remove programs), downloaded it again and reinstalled it, works fine. I think they upgraded it and the old version wouldn't accept the new updates.

Tony,

That's a good idea, I'll give that a try.

Pete