Spybot 1.6.2 "Unloading User Registry Hives...this may take a while" +2 hours

[Nubijean]

Hi! I've just installed 1.63 ang got it running once. Scanned OK, clicked X to close, then got the Unloading Hives message. I had read your message, so tried to be patient, but after about 45 minutes of no HD activity I gave up and shut machine down. I thought, since I've just done a clean install of Win98SE the registry can't be large.

Now, Spybot will not load and run. Gets almost to end of progress bar and no further. Don't know if shutting down caused the problem. Ideas anyone? Thanks.

[adamlaughlin]

Hey I am having the same problem with my computer.
It's my fault because the power cord got pulled out of the back and this started happening immediately. But that's how it started.

It happens in safe mode, it happens after I used the OS disc for System Restore and I also tried a startup repair. The problem persists.
When I try to close Spybot it does indeed say in the title bar "Unloading User registry hives might take awhile..." and it locks right up. No new processes will start and Windows offers to terminate those (all) which do not respond, graying out the screen. Caps lock and such still work (info: this is because the keyboard is on a low level IRQ so that CTRL+ALT+DEL always works when the motherboard is receiving many signals) so it's not a hardware problem and my RAM passes the Windows memory tests.

The problem happens whether or not I try to exit Spybot; I have only a few seconds of time and sending more instructions to the processor seems to accelerate the lock-up, triggering this "unloading" of the registry earlier and making all processes hang. Like I said, I've tried using this time to run the Spybot uninstaller but there isn't enough.


I hope this is enough information for someone out there to help us, the problem is still fairly recent but needs a good bump. I'll add on more information as I try more repairs but I'd like to avoid a full reformat.

Thanks for any attention to this.
A.L.

P.S.:

I also am running AVG with SpySweeper alongside it and therefore I have three resident shields plus Windows Defender running, this could be caused by conflicts between the processes. They tend to be intensive and may be caught in loops?

[adamlaughlin]

I have resolved this issue by using System Restore again to 11:00am this morning. If anyone recently upgraded Safari, you have a restore point today.

I want to keep subscribed to this and if an expert is reading please feel free to ask me more questions to help the others out if they don't have SR enabled. That sucked!

Fortunately when I closed to Spybot Window this time, I saw the same message - unloading user registry hives might take awhile... and it only took less than a second to close. It's been a while and everything is normal again.