gbtjom said:
I should have known the "AV". Duh. lol
You're doing pretty well to have known the other two. It's the sad state of the Internet that's lead to you knowing about these more obscure tools before being familiar with what an AV is.
I ran "Kasperski" yesterday and it found stuff that Spybot didn't so I figured I'd run Spybot again today to see if it would speed up. I ran the scan in Safe Mode for over one and half hours and it still was only 75% through. I got frustrated and stopped the damn thing. As it ran it did not show any potential threats on the screen but I've noticed in the past if you stop a scan it will reset (is this true) and not show anything it HAD found up to that point....
Also, at the very bottom it showed it had to run something like 32000 (approx) checks so it was in the 26000 (approx) when I stopped it (26000/32000...hence the approx 75%). Oddly, when I ran it the other day (after I downloaded the 1.4 version) it only had roughly 800 checks to do and it DID run much faster. Why did this change after my first check?
Kaspersky is primarily an antivirus, or file scanner, so it will always find things that Spybot S&D doesn't since Spybot concentrates on Spyware and the Registry. As I recall, aborting a scan generally leaves anything already discovered during the scan on screen, but I'd have to test to be sure.
It's OK that you chose to abort the scan since that's still way too long in Safe mode. Unfortunately, you were probably close to completion since the scan typically appears to 'skip' from about 29000 to 32000, due to the way the actual scan process functions. However, don't try it again, since as I said this is still far too long.
The 800 detections situation occured because you installed the updates after starting Spybot. Since the detections are only read at startup of the program, you only had the small number that are included within the Spybot S&D installation program itself.
The main problem here is that I'm rather a newbie at all this spyware/malware stuff. I'm not real certain about XP runs and does its thing either so I'm not sure what exact questions to ask.
Plus, there are SO many different programs you can run it's hard to keep track: CWS, Spydoctor, Registry Mechanic, HJT, CCleaner, Ad-ware..bla bla bla...I don't know which is best. It's somewhat frustrating....
Everyone's a newbie at some point, but you're doing fine as I mentioned before.
For quick reference, CWS and HJT are tools that should only be used with the instruction of someone skilled in malware removal, they aren't general scanning tools like Spydoctor, Ad-Aware (not Ad-ware, that's the bad stuff) or even Spybot S&D itself. It's hard to tell the difference, but if it doesn't have a pretty interface and at least some sort of commercial version, it's probably not for the average user. This means it could be dangerous to your PC if you mis-interpret what it's telling you and just try to 'fix' everything. In fact, these two tools will simply wipe out everything they're displaying if you tell them to fix everything.
Registry Mechanic and CCleaner are more user oriented I believe, though the former could still be dangerous since it's allowing you to mess with the registry and the latter really just cleans cookies as I recall. I'm not really familiar with either, just recognize their names.
Personally, I'd let others guide you until you've had time to really understand what the tools do and what might happen if you mess up. That is, unless you like rebuilding your PC after crippling it so you can understand it better. That's called a Techno-Geek.
Please follow the posting instructions we gave you. We'll look at it from both a malware and system point of view and try to determine what's causing the long scans.
Bitman
