little to no immunization

[drragostea]

I re-read your posts meticulously and I think I have an answer.

1. The reason you do not see the "Tools" and "Settings" option is because you are not in Advanced Mode. Turn that on by going to "Mode>Advanced Mode". The tab to do that is on the top.
2. Deactiving avast! and Adaware does not affect Spybot or its Immunization function.
3. Have you actually considered clicking on the Immunize button?
If you just click on the tab of the program all you see is the status.
Let me guide you through the screenshots. (I will attach them).
The first screenshot shows you how to get to Advanced Mode.
The second screenshot has two Immunize buttons. The shield shows you the status. The green cross is what actually immunizes your machine.

[dginsd]

K, switched to advanced mode, and thats good to know about the Avast and Ad Aware not effecting the spybot, thank you for the tips. As far as the immunization, I click into the immunization section, then on the immunize green cross, it goes through it's immunization of all the sections while the green status bar fills up from the left to right, when it finishes everything is listed as unprotected.

Heres something else I've noticed, if I click on check again it will go through it again, with the same results; no protection. If I instead click on the green cross again it will start to go through the immunize process but will freeze up pretty quickly (the items it does get to before freeze still unprotected) and the only way to get out is to open the task manager and end process. Is this normal, are you just not suppose to click the immunize button a second time?

[drragostea]

What other security software do you use? Or is it AdAware and avast! ? Have you used other software in the past that protected the HOSTS file?

Have you tried reinstalling Spybot and see if that works?

[dginsd]

The only security I was using is Avast free anti-virus 5.0, and Ad Aware free. I say was using because I uninstalled the Ad Aware in an attempt to troubleshoot Spybot's immunization issue but this changed nothing. I haven't reinstalled Ad Aware and likely won't till I fix it.

I've also tried disconnecting from the internet and disabling my anti-virus, resetting my host file, reseting IE8, all of these have change nothing so I'm really at a loss now.

I did used the hosts tool in Spybot S&D and after I did that the "Global Hosts" will immunize, big surprise right.

At this point I'm kind of out of ideas so I really need help, so if you have some other suggestions I'm all ears.