Spybot S&D runs very slowly

[meslow]

It takes 4 or more hours to run a scan. Why is that?
I watch the progress counter, it's getting like 10-20 per second.
I have v1.4 with current updates running under W98SE on a 333MHz machine.
I tried running in Safe Mode, and that was slow too.
Nothing showing in the Task Manager except Explorer and Systray and this program.

http://forums.spybot.info/images/smilies/sad.gif


meslow

[blues]

maybe you can try spybot 1.6. it has faster scanning to me than 1.5. i dont remember how 1.4 was.

[Greyfox]

meslow,

You could try using version 1.6 as suggested by blues, however you should note that some users with W98 and W98SE on memory starved low speed platforms have had significant problems, and you may have to backtrack.

Over time the number of nasties that Spybot has to contend with has grown, and as a result it has a lot more work to do. On the old slow platforms one of the consequences is very long scan times. The current detection updates have to try to keep pace with the miriad of possible infections currently out there, and Spybot has recently anounced that their use is no longer supported with the older 1.3and 1.4 versions. There are, and have been problems resulting from their use with the earlier versions.

If you do decide to try the upgrade, please un-immunise and shut down the browser helper and Teatimer if you are using it, then completely uninstall the old version before you install the later one. This will give you the best chance of getting a satisfactory result.

[meslow]

meslow,

You could try using version 1.6 as suggested by blues, however you should note that some users with W98 and W98SE on memory starved low speed platforms have had significant problems, and you may have to backtrack.

Thanks for an explanation of the official story, I missed that on the main site.

I don't understand "backtrack". I do have only 96MB of RAM, but I imagine that 1.6 is more memory intensive anyway, that being the way of software development in general. And I don't understand why new detection updates make it run slow. It starts out running maybe 100 per second but by the time it is at 10k things checked it is much slower and at 40k it is down to 10-20 per sec and it has about 260k to do. So it is running slow, not just running a long time. It isn't spending its time doing disk accesses etc., it just seems to run very slowly. It also takes a long time to open the program when I click on the icon. I ran an antivirus scan, didn't find anything. Any other ideas about what might make it run extra slowly on my simple system (don't even have a sound card, just ethernet card? I've heard that registry stuff can slow things down but dunno if that applies here.

I may try the upgrade even though I am suspicious of it, I can always just uninstall THAT if it's worse, and if 1.4 isn't really supported I just won't use S. S&D at all...

meslow

[drragostea]

96Mb of RAM on your Operating System would be more than enough for Spybot-SD 1.6.0.30. Many users have been reporting in the past that Spybot-SD 1.5.2.20 scans took a long time (hours). Spybot-SD 1.6 is optimized for fast scanning while also maintaining efficiency. Read this:
Support for earlier versions is about to end
--
What anti-virus program do you currently use?

Like I said before the amount of RAM you have is more than enough for Spybot-SD to run. I would suggest you run when the computer is at minimal activity.

More files will also mean longer scanning time, but this may not be the case all the time.

Spybot-SD does not use any memory (computer resources), with the exception of scanning.
--
This may or may not help ease your situation, but I would suggest you do these (if you wish to or have the time) to see if this improves the situation:
-Defragment the drive.
-Clear all the cache, temp. files, and cookies from your browsers.

Spybot-SD will prompt you to clear the temp. files in your Temporarily Folder if there are more than 100 files in it.

In the meantime, try to download Spybot-SD 1.6.0.30 (latest and most current version) suggested by GreyFox.

[meslow]

Thanks for the link, but it looks like 1.4 remains an officially supported version. so that doesn't really help. The anecdote about 1.5 running slow does help. All caches are cleared, but I won't delete all cookies, that doesn't make sense. I have deleted all but my regular cookies (like adware or random site cookies) and I know S&D reports some of those but there were very few on this computer anyway (it found 6 when I let it run for 4hrs a week or so ago). I have AVG anti-virus but ran a Trend-Micros "online" scan as a check. I have Firefox 1.5 and IE5, but again, neither was open. I only run anti-virus or spyware checks manually, no Teatimer etc. running.

I will try 1.6 on your recommendation, thank you.

meslow

[FONT="Tahoma"]96Mb of RAM on your Operating System would be more than enough for Spybot-SD 1.6.0.30. Many users have been reporting in the past that Spybot-SD 1.5.2.20 scans took a long time (hours). Spybot-SD 1.6 is optimized for fast scanning while also maintaining efficiency. Read this:
Support for earlier versions is about to end

[drragostea]

96Mb of RAM on your Operating System would be more than enough for Spybot-SD 1.6.0.30. Many users have been reporting in the past that Spybot-SD 1.5.2.20 scans took a long time (hours). Spybot-SD 1.6 is optimized for fast scanning while also maintaining efficiency. Read this:
Support for earlier versions is about to end
--
More files will also mean longer scanning time, but this may not be the case all the time.

AVG anti-virus can be memory intensive. In addition, AVG 7.5 is no longer supported by Grisoft. The latest version AVG 8.0 does not support Windows 98SE (legacy OS). I don't see how AVG can support and actively defend you if it's definitions are not update to date.

AVG's memory usage may be the culprit.

As a side note, Mozilla Firefox 1.5 is no longer supported. You can upgrade to Firefox 2.0.0.16 as a latest. Internet Explorer 6 is also supported by Windows 98SE (same goes for Windows 98, Windows ME, and Windows 2000 Professional).

I would suggest you upgrade the browsers along with Spybot-SD 1.6.0.30 if you have the time.

What would be best is to test Spybot 1.6 first as upgrading browsers does not affect Spybot's scanning time (and it is optional too).

Edit: Small addon: http://forums.spybot.info/showpost.p...51&postcount=8

[meslow]

Hi again. I uninstalled 1.4 then downloaded 1.6 from safer-networking #3. It seemed to install fine. I rebooted as requested. Clicked on the icon on the desktop. 1.6 also took its time opening.

BUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

as it was opening all my files vanished from the desktop. The folders stayed. Spybot S&D update would not work, something about a missing file (well, they ALL were wiped out as it turns out). So I closed the program found that no other files were available and tried to restart. Yup, most everything is gone and cannot boot from C drive. Booting from a floppy confirms that DOS cannot see files but can see directories.

This is rather annoying. I happen to have backed up important stuff, but I'm reallllllllllllllllllllllly disappointed. And I will have to reload the OS and find the drivers and so on.

So I'm on a different computer writing to the forum now in case someone has a clue

1) what happened, or 2) whether anything might be recoverable from the drive by "ordinary user" methods in case my backup isn't as complete as I'd like or I can somehow not have to go download drivers etc. etc.

My naive guess is that when 1.6 was saving a copy of the registry something went wrong. That was one of several options offered as 1.6 was opening (others were to Immunize, which I declined, and I don't recall what else). But it might be that the wipeout occured before that point in time, I don't recall exactly when the desktop files vanished, I thought it was a display glitch at the time.

:(

meslow

[129260]

Did you completely remove spybot before installing the latest version? I have no idea at all as to why this would happen....I have never seen this before....I honestly have no idea why....wow....any team members have any ideas?

[Guingion]

This is not a contribution to the solution, but an add to the problem. I'm sorry to tell you, but I too have problems with Spybot 1.6 on a Windows 98SE machine. I'm lucky, I guess, because nothing disappeared, but the scanningtime is about 3 hours, which is a tremendous long time.

During the section 13----/267743 virtumonde it went VERY SLOW. Maybe this is a clue.

My processor-speed is 533 MHZ, systemmemory is 384 MB SDRAM and the harddisk capacity is 40 GB. There are not many files on the disk. Before running Spybot I always clear my computer with CrapCleaner and Wise Registry Cleaner. I have Norman for antivirus and this seems to be the least excessive CPU-user of virusscanners I'm told.

I uninstalled Spybot 1.4 completely before installing 1.6. Me too is eager for a solution or I must consider to uninstall Spybot permanently, which I rather don't want to. On my XP machine it runs fine though.