Version 1.5.2.20 runs much more slowly than version 1.5.1.19

[pudelein]

I installed the new SSD version 1.5.2.10 yesterday and was startled by the very long scan time as compared with the just superseded 1.5.2RC1 (=1.5.1.19). On my machine (1.7GHz P4, WinXPSP2 HE, Comodo Firewall 3.0, Comodo Memory Firewall 2.0, AVG Free 7.5.516), with SSD updated to 01/31/2008, the scan took 55 minutes on one trial and 50 on another. This was much longer than the 20 to 30 minute scan range that I have been familiar with in the past.

To check all this, I uninstalled 1.5.2.20 and reinstalled 1.5.1.19. With SSD updated to 01/31/2008, I ran two more scans. The first, with all SSD immunizations removed, took 20 minutes; the second, with "my choice" of immunizations asserted, took 22 minutes.

It looks to me as if something has slipped rather badly in the release of the latest version of SSD. I will remain with the 1.5.2RC1 for now, in hopes that the fault can be located and fixed soon.

[pudelein]

Bump!

I really hate to do this, but there ought to be some response from the Spybot Team to the issue in my initial post!

[bitman]

The scan time went the other way for me, more than halving the scan time to complete in about 15 minutes on an old PII 400MHz system.

Have you tried turning off your AVG AV temporarily to see if that's interacting with Spybot during the scan? I'm not blaming AVG, it just might help determine where the problem is coming from.

It's possible that something in the new Spybot S & D engine is being monitored by AVG looking for potential 'virus like' activity and causing enough overhead to slow the overall scan.

Bitman

[pudelein]

It has taken me some time to follow Bitman's suggestions and extensions thereof in an attempt to find out what is causing my very poor experience with SSD 1.5.2.20.

I can state unequivocally that the slow running of the latest version as compared with 1.5.1.19 (= 1.5.2rc1) is not closely connected to any of the following: AVG Free antivirus; Comodo Firewall Pro; Comodo Memory Firewall; Comodo BOClean. Removing AVG Free leaves SSD 1.5.2.20 scan times unchanged at around 50 minutes, compared to about 23 minutes for the release candidate. With all of the Comodo products removed, the scan time is reduced by only 3 or 4 minutes.

Running Process Explorer during the scan shows that SSD uses about 95% of the CPU time during the entire scan, with only short periods where SSD is waiting for I/O activity to complete. No other applications take any significant time at all; they just flash on briefly at the 2 to 5 % CPU time level. The only consistent competitor is WinPatrol Plus: Scotty is alway sniffing around, but never uses any real time.

Finally, the SSD scans are particularly slow in the range of the bots numbered from about 35000 to about 70000.

I should also mention that Ad-Aware 2007 runs its full scan on my system in about 30 minutes while SuperAntiSpyware
requires around 75 minutes. None of these scanners ever find anything, either.

I will continue to use 1.5.2rc1 for now, in hopes that the Spybot Team will find out what is going on here.

[jamesftai]

Slow is an understatement. I have a scan that has currently been running for almost 2 hours. With previous versions of Spybot Search and Destroy scans took 20-60 minutes depending on the configuration of the computer. We have some computers that are very old and underpowered and they never took longer than 60 minutes but with version 1.5.2 scans are taking 3-4 times longer to complete no matter the configuration of the computer. This is very bad to say the least.

I will stay with the older version until this slowness is fixed.

[spybotsandra]

Hello,

Please download todays updates.
That should improve the scan time.

Best regards
Sandra
Team Spybot