Spybot 1.5.1.18 & Firefox Slow Down

[lm10021]

Hello,

I've been using Spybot for several years now, with no real problems. Today I updated to the latest release posted at these forums (spybotsd152rc1.exe). Now Firefox has slowed way down. This happens on 2 machines. No other changes were made to either system.

WinXP Pro - Firefox 2.0.0.11
Firefox seems to hang after a link is clicked ... like it's thinking ... aprox. 10 seconds? Once it finishes thinking the URL loads normally. This happens on cached pages as well as new visits and pages on the same domain. IE 6 on the same machine runs fast and as usual.

Win2k sp4 - Firefox 2.0.0.11
The same behavior can be duplicated on my Win 2k PC. I did try the "dns client" fix located in the Spybot FAQ, but it didn't seem to make any noticable difference. Again IE 6 is fine.

Any help, suggestions, idea, would be most appreciated.

Thanks!
LM

[Zenobia]

The slowdown of Firefox might have happened if you Immunized Firefox,due to a large amount of entries in the hostperm.1 file.You could try unimmunizing some things in Firefox,and see if things are any better.A lot of people with the Firefox slowdown problem seem to unimmunize Images,Installations and Popups,and just leave Cookies immunized,but it's up to you.
If you'd like to unimmunize part of Firefox,open Spybot,hit Immunize to the left.If you rightclick in the Immunization window to the right,you can select deselect all.Then,checkmark the Immunizations for Firefox you would like to remove,then hit Undo.

[lm10021]

A lot of people with the Firefox slowdown problem seem to unimmunize Images,Installations and Popups,and just leave Cookies immunized,but it's up to you.

Thank you Zenobia!

Just unimmunizing cookies didn't work, but if I unimmunize all of the FF entries my FF browser is back to working on my systems.

I really would like to know what went wrong. I've used Spybot on a many different WIN systems and browser combos and never had any problems. I've been racking my brain, but the only change I can come up with on both systems, between 1.4 and this version, is an update to Zone Alarm (free) to v.7+ from a 5.+ version.

Lastly, is there anything I should be looking out for now that Firefox is not "immunized"?

Thanks again!!
-LM

[Zenobia]

You're welcome. :)
Spybot 1.5 and up adds quite a large amount of entries to the hostperm.1,and when a large amount of entries are added to the hostperm.1 file,it can cause a slowdown with Firefox sometimes.
There was a thread about that a while back that may help explain it a little more:
http://forums.spybot.info/showthread.php?t=17686

And on page 2,there's a comment from Yodama here explaining a little more about it:

hello,

thank you for your statements and reports on this issue.

About the performance issue with the Firefox it appears that Firefox has an issue when handling a large hostperm.1. However this issue does not appear to be obvious on all computer configurations. There are some steps which can be done on our part to improve this (like reducing the items added) , but the main issue still lies with Firefox handling the hostperm.1 file.
http://forums.spybot.info/showpost.php?p=133084&postcount=15

Spybot 1.4 didn't immunize Firefox,so that issue never came up.


Lastly, is there anything I should be looking out for now that Firefox is not "immunized"?
If you Immunized the hosts file,that will stop Firefox from going to some bad sites,so that would help protect you some while using Firefox.
And blocking third-party cookies would help cut down on the amount of tracking cookies Spybot finds after a scan:
http://www.spybot.info/en/faq/37.html
hth. :)

[xwig.com]

I am using Vista Ultimate, FireFox 2.0.0.11, and SpyBot 1.5.2 and and have the same slow down issues. However, after unimmunizing all FF items I still have the slow down issues. I reinstalled FF without an uninstall and rebooted to no avail.

What should I try next? A clean uninstall and registry clean up? A sys restore? This is my first ever issue with SB after years of use.

Thank you in advance.

[xwig.com]

I found the post on deleting hostperm.1

[xeeds]

I also had terrible slowdown and lock up problems on 2 PCs with Firefox and even IE7 was not responding well. I suffered for nearly two months getting very frustrated. I have unchecked Teatime and SDhelper in Spybot advanced/tools/resident, and now everything runs much better. This may not be the whole problem, but the improvement is quite significant.
Maybe you guys can look into this?
Ed