Update SpyBot search & destroy 1.6.0

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The latest version of the well know, malware scanner is available at Downloads – The home of Spybot-S&D!.

Greatly improved scanning speed is just one of the features. See News – The home of Spybot-S&D! for more information.

Joe

--Joe

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Thanks – a full scan is indeed much faster (almost a factor 3 on my PC), which is very welcome, although there are still these annoying moments that the scan appears to grind to an almost complete standstill.

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I wonder if anyone else has seen this one. I get a message early on about temporary files that cannot be deleted. I can’t imagine where 300+ files might be that can’t be deleted. I’ve run twice to see what happens and get the same result both times.

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I always clear my Temp folder and browser cache before running a scan, so I didn’t see this message, but it appears to say that there are 322 temp files, not that there are 322 temp files that cannot be deleted.

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If anyone else gets a message like this I’d appreciate hearing about it. I did (again) a Disk Cleanup, emptied my Fx cache and looked in C:windowstemp finding only a few files. so I tried again and got the same message. I have no idea what it might consider 300 temp files.

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Al,
I just DL and used the newest version and didn’t get any messages like that. In fact it only found one cookie that it wanted to delete. So I did.

I don’t think I noticed any big improvement in scan time like Hans did but then again, every system is different.
Mine took about 25 minutes or so.

Hans: any time estimate for your scan?

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If this is on your Vista machine try running Spybot as administrator. What did Disk Cleanup say about temporary files?

Joe

--Joe

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It’s my XP – I haven’t installed it on Vista yet.

When I do Disk Cleanup (XP) I don’t even pay attention to what’s in the window, I’ve done it so successfully for so long. So, from last Saturday I don’t have any idea what it said. If I do it right this minute, see attached.

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Well, it sure looks like you don’t have any temporary files around. Do you have other accounts on the XP box? I’m not sure that Disk Cleanup on XP looks at all accounts.

Joe

--Joe

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No it doesn’t Joe, and I have to admit that I knew that but I don’t usually worry about the other “sundry” temp folders that are lying around on the drive. I have a number of ’em myself with “temp” in the name of the folder that I use to hold, ahem, temporary stuff. Anyway, I think I just found it, although I don’t understand why Spybot had a problem with it. See attached clip. This is a folder in MY user profile. There are others in the D & S structure of other profiles that Spybot didn’t get concerned with, but maybe it couldn’t delete these because I’m the active user. The mystery is compounded by why did it NOT delete any of the files in the other D & S temp (local settings) folders – they’re still there. I don’t know and I probably never will.

I only know that I deleted all the ones shown in the clip and re-ran Spybot WITHOUT the complaint window! Who knows if it’s a bug, a fee-chur, or a leper-con!

BTW, since I didn’t do so yesterday, I timed this run I made a little while ago and it took about 11 minutes to run past 170-thousand some-odd bots.

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That is weird. I thought that Disk Cleanup would’ve identified those in your account. I’ve got no idea why Spybot could not delete them.

Joe

--Joe

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Hey Joe, I just thought I’d come back with a little followup. Today I installed on my Vista OS and ran as Administrator. The first time through, it said the speed would increase if I let it remove 549 temporary files. I clicked Yes and the next message flashed up so fast I didn’t get to fully see the number. BUT, it said there were 300-something files that it couldn’t delete! Well, I went on with the run, which by the way took only eight minutes on my Vista drive, probably because it’s so new and still doesn’t have gads of stuff installed.

So, I just ran it for the second time and this time the window that DOES wait for the Yes, said 317 files that needed to be deleted. I again clicked Yes, quickly got a second window which doesn’t stay on the screen that said it COULD NOT delete those 317 files and went on to the program’s GUI screen. I stopped the run at that time.

Now I have to go hunting for where the Vista equivalent is for that temporary folder in my profile in XP. I’m betting that it’s the same kinda animal. Ideas?

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With Vista the default location is C:Usersuser-nameAppDataLocal

Joe

--Joe

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Thank you as usual, Joe, that did the trick! In that folder there is a temp folder and a temporary internet files folder. The temporary internet files folder clicks as access denied. BUT, as in my XP installation, the temp folder had 300+ folders and files in it, so I did Ctrl-A and delete on the whole shootin’ match. All but two files were willing to be deleted and THIS TIME Spybot did NOT stop at the screen asking to delete any files.

Thanks again and I don’t know if anyone else is experiencing this problem or not, but I hope your two pieces of advice help them if they are!

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You’re welcome Al. I’m confused now though. I thought that Disk Cleanup got rid of the files in that ‘temp’ folder when you let it delete temporary files.

Joe

--Joe

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I must admit that I hadn’t run a disk cleanup this afternoon, so it may very well perform as you say. I’ll be doing my normal weekly cleanups and imaging in the morning, so I’ll see, but it may be too late, now that I’ve already manually deleted the bulk of the files so there probably won’t be anything in there in the morning.

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The next window that comes up says they can’t be deleted. I will go on a hunt for “temps” but it’s hard to believe since Saturday when I did my housekeeping that more than 300 files have piled up that are NOT deletable. Oh well…

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Ah, that way – thanks for the explanation. Yes, that seems unlikely…

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> Hans: any time estimate for your scan?

Yes – last weekend’s scan with the ‘old’ version took about 28 minutes. A full scan with 1.6.0 took about 10 minutes.

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Hans,
I’ve done two scans since downloading 1.6.0 – The first (initial one) took 43 mins and the next one, just this evening, took 56 mins! I have to say that that is somewhat quicker than the old version but still well in excess of what you and others seem to be indicating. I understand that there are probably many variables in all this, but any idea just why my scans should be that much longer? Spybot tells me it scans 173156 items. Other than the time issue I’m perfectly happy with it.
Keith

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What is your hardware configuration – CPU, RAM, disk?

Joe

--Joe

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Joe/Hans,
Celeron® CPU 2.60GHz with 192MB of RAM. Hard Drive is 70GB with 19GB used. Like Hans I clear my browser cache and temp folder prior to scanning.
Keith

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Which version of Windows are you using?

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Hans,
Sorry, should have said at the beginning – XP(H) SP3 fully updated
Regards,
Keith

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That might explain the slow scanning – Windows XP needs at least 256 MB to run comfortably, and 512 MB or more is recommended. With only 192 MB RAM, it probably has to use virtual memory extensively, but this is much slower than physical RAM.

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Thanks Hans – I just ran SIW and it tells me:

Physical memory 192MB total with 49MB free; memory load 74%.
Virtual memory 678MB total with 222MB free

Guess I could do with upgrading my computer – One day!

Anyway, thanks for the input.
Regards,
Keith

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The original Celeron processors were cheaper because they had a slower BUS and less on board cache. That meant slower I/O (thus overall) performance than a non-Celeron processor of the same Mhz rating. So, between the small amount of RAM and the general slowness of a Celeron machine you could reasonably expect an I/O intensive activity such as a full scan by S&D to be much slower on your machine than others.

Joe

--Joe

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Thanks Joe. Perhaps a good example of ‘you only get what you pay for’. At least, thanks to you and Hans, I got the answer to my question!
Regards,
Keith

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My PC isn’t particularly fast – a 2.5 GHz Pentium 4 with only 512 MB RAM. Hard disk is 60 GB with 27 GB used. I always clear the browser cache and temp folder before scanning, and quit all other applications.

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Keith,

As another point of reference SpyBot Version 1.6 checked 170,305 items on my system in just under 10 minutes. I run XP-Pro (SP2) on a 3.3GHz Pent 4 with 1GB of ram. I did no cleaning up before running it. This is a big reduction in scanning time for me so I am quite pleased with the new version.

Paul

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Just an aside to this thread. I DL and installed 1.6 last night and then updated, immunized and scanned. Scan took about the same time as usual and found no problems, as usual. When I turned on the monitor this AM (I almost never shut down) Spy Sweeper had run it’s scheduled scan and all was well. I checke my mail, came here did a few other things and then went and ran some errands and made a few calls. Came back about 2 hours later and my system was non-responsive. Nothing seemed to work. Couldn’t get on the internet, couldn’t get the Start menu to open (even with the Windows key) and as I started to give up and hit Cntrl-Alt-Del everything I had clicked started to open (there were no running tasks nad the processing was 99% System Idle) then some off the wall Flash update popped up. I closed that and shut down the system using Task Manager andas it was shutting down, a window came up I had never seen before saying that SysFade was trying to close etc, etc. I chose to close it manually and clicked End Program but it came up again so I killed it and the system rebooted. On reboot, I had the same issues and went through the same process shutting down and the same window came up again, so this time I let it close itself. On reboot I was finally able to access Google and checked on SysFade. Seems to be a Trojan and may be undectable by third party software (so how’d they find it) However, once online I was able to move around and check my mail, etc. but after 5 minutes the system locked up again in the same way. After a complete shutdown and reboot it behaved in almost exactly the same way and locked up again. This happened 3 times and after the third time, when I got on the system I went right to Add/Remove programs and removed Spybot S&D 1.6 and rebooted. That was 2 hours ago and things seem to be fine now. I have searched for SysFade.exe and scanned my system with Avast which found a Trojan (Win32:Trojan-gen) in System Restore and quarantined it. I’m at a loss to figure out where this thing came from because my system has been clean for years. But removing Spybot 1.6 seems to have restored all functionality. One other variable, my AC was out for several hours today and it got rather hot in here (85 F). Don’t know if the problem may have been heat related or not.

I’m going out for the evening (I need a couple beers after all this) but if anyone has any insight or information I’m all ears.

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