spybotsd15he-beta1 cripples UltraMon

[solunauk]

I am using UltraMon 2.7.1 to switch between the two monitors on my Win2k Pro SP4 machine. I had previously used Spybot 1.5 but had the problem with slow startup, so uninstalled it and installed spybotsd15he-beta1.

Immediately UltraMon stopped working. When I tried to access a monitor profile I got a message saying that there was no program associated with the extension .umprofile. This was not repairable using Windows Explorer folder tools, nor any other method I could find. I tried re-installing UltraMon but no luck. I then uninstalled both UltraMon and Spybot and reinstalled UltraMon. It worked again exactly as it should. I then installed spybotsd15he-beta1 again, and got exactly the same problem as before.

Spybotsd15he-beta1 is somehow destroying the file association(s) used by UltraMon.

I repeated the process of uninstalling Spybot and UltraMon then reinstalling the latter and it worked fine, so there can be no doubt that Spybot is the source of the problem.

[PepiMK]

Well, "somehow" is a bit ambigious... how about some information on how Spybot-S&D reacted? Have you noticed any TeaTimer popups? What about the scan results of Spybot-S&D, they show details on each entry found, have you noticed the term .umprofile there?

[solunauk]

Spybot did not 'react'. It found nothing on a scan with the latest updates and UltraMon installed. So I did not look at the logfile. I do not use Tea Timer. I apologise for not being able to give more clues but I am disinclined to install 1.5HE again and have to go throught the same rigmarole. It's not just a question of having to uninstall UltraMon - I have to go through the registry and delete all references to the file association .umprofile, otherwise when I re-install UltraMon (with Spybot uninstalled) the file association is not fixed. Could Spybot be corrupting the portion of the registry that deals with file associations? I notice the file extension .umprofile is longer than would normally be used by most apps - perhaps 1.5HE doesn't like that?

I'd have thought that it would be possible for the developers to examine the differences between 1.5 and 1.5HE Beta1 to see what is likely to be causing the problem, but I guess it will be low priority.

I'll post the problem on the UltraMon forum and see if anyone there can help.

[PepiMK]

Spybot-S&D has one more-than-three-letters extension itself, and the whole installer is made with a standard installer engine (InnoSetup, used by a lot of software).

The only thing were Spybot-S&D reacts before the results list are system services, which this isn't about.

You can use the project tools on this forum yourself to get a list of all changes between versions (well, at least rough topics, not the implementation details of course), but there is simply none that has effect on file extension handlers, so it's kind of spooky.

I guess we would need to install UltraMon on a test machine and attempt ourselves.

[solunauk]

Spooky, as you say.

I'll just hope that the next full release doesn't display the same behaviour.