TeaTimer quirk?

[honu1]

I really don't understand how tea timer works with S+D.
The past couple of nights that I have tried to shut down my computer, I get an error message, quite lengthy, with a lot of numbers. But the is also a reference to "resident". I don't know what's going on, but it has me concerned.
I am running Windows Home-SP2,Firefox as browser, Windows Defender as firewall, AVG Free for virus.
I'm sorry I don't have more info as to the error message.
As I'm thinking about it now, this strange occorance happened the day I had made a set of recovery cd's for my HP computer.
If I get the error message again tonight I will be sure to write everything down to better help you to help me.
Thank you
honu1

[spybotsandra]

Hello,

Probably TeaTimer has told you that it has deleted a bad registry entry and blocked it.

Please read this information about TeaTimer:
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/faq/33.html
and http://www.safer-networking.org/en/faq/34.html

Best regards
Sandra
Team Spybot

[honu1]

Thanks for the input. My system is acting normally at shutdown, so that's a relief.
I don't understand why resident should give me an alert tho, when I'm not actively using my system. It happened tonight with my monitor in screen saver mode.
I had no clue what all the file names are, so I had t do some research on the web. I hope the value I chose to allow the change was correct.:scratch:

Does Spybot or Resident have a list of files right at the site to make my searches quicker?

Thanks
honu1

[honda12]

the general 'rules' of teatimer is that If you surf the web and without any user interaction the teatimer pops up and warns about a registry change it is better to "deny", but if you install something by yourself it is OK to "allow" the change.

At present (as far as I know of) there is no list of files to make your searches faster

[honu1]

So are you implying that someone or something may be trying to invade my system?
My computer was on, but I was not surfing the web nor reading emails.
This tea timer facet of Spybot S+D has made me nervous to say the least. Before Tea Timer I just ran my scan weekly + my system seemed to run fine. Of course I had to have a complete reinstall of Windows XP a while back.

Ever since that awful time, I'm so very nervous when it comes to alerts + error messages. And when Tea Timer requires me to allow or deny something about my registry it's pretty nerve wracking!:fear:

[honda12]

oh no,

I wasn't trying to alarm you or anything! :clown:

you computer writes and deletes entries from the registry all the time - you will get the most prompts from teatimer when you are installing software because so much information is being written to the registry.

most of the prompts I will get 'out of the blue' are from programs just trying to add themselves to the start up list (one common example is quicktime) I feel I can deny those changes.

sorry if I wasn't clear in the last post! :fear:

[honu1]

So as I am a novice user, really, is there any disadvantage to not using the tea timer portion of Spybot? It just gets me all tensed up when I have to sort out that allow or deny part.

I have always been told never to mess with my registry as I am clueless as to what's going on there. :sad:

I don't want to have my system crash on me ever again! :oops:

[honda12]

Personally, In my point of view - I think teatimer is a feature that should be used by more experienced users that feel comfotable with the windows registry.

I don't actually use the teatimer as I'm very cautious (probably over cautious!) about what I install and download.

As long as users use their common sense, I don't see teatimer being an essential part of your security

I also think that teatimer may make novice users panic - something we do not want! I have seen the same thing happen with the vista uac (user account control).

If you feel you want to disable teatimer here is how to do it:

To disable teatimer: Go into Spybot > Mode > Advanced Mode > Tools > Resident. Under the heading "Resident protection status" uncheck the following:

- Resident "TeaTimer" (Protection of over-all system settings) active.

To reactivate it: Go into Spybot > Mode > Advanced Mode > Tools > Resident. Under the heading "Resident protection status" check the following:
Resident "TeaTimer" (Protection of over-all system settings) active.


here is a pic aswell!
http://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj115/ilovehobnobs/Untitled-1.png


honda :)

[honu1]

Thanks honda!:bigthumb:
Your directions +screen shot were very helpful. I was concerned about even going to the advanced mode as it warned me that doing so could alter my system if I didn't know what I was doing.

For now I feel better just running Spybot in the default mode without worrying about resident.

Thanks ever so much for being here! :bighug:

[honda12]

no problem :bigthumb:

[Hawgwash]

Thank you honda12 from another nervous newbie.
Although I have had a computer for about 5 years and consider myself to be a somewhat average user, I don't like messing with things I don't understand. If I can't hold it in my hand and look at it I'm not comfortable.

I also find tutorials and a lot of forums automatically assume everyone reading is in some advanced state of geekhood and understands the language (or worse abbreviations).

The posts from honu1 could have been from me.
I too, recently upgraded to the latest Spybot with TeaTimer and have been very intimidated by the pop ups. I spend a lot of time on a large motorcycle forum and am constantly clicking on links and user profiles. TeaTimer acts like a Gattling gun with rapid fire popups. I find the tutorial lacking and just take the chance to allow everything without knowing whether to save changes or not.

I got so frustrated I went into msconfig and removed TeaTimer from start up. Then I cruised other "tech" forums and was bombarded with nononononono...never disable teatimer. So, I enabled it again, but now see how to disable it within tools should I decide to do so again..

Anyway...it is good to hear from a Spybot forum Sr. Member that it is not necessarily a bad thing to disable it.

I ran the old S&D version without TeaTimer for years, so what is the big deal with not using TeaTimer?

Thanks again for being patient with the likes of honu1 amd me and explaining things in very understandable terms.

H~

[honda12]

No problem Hawgwash,

I'm just here to help :bigthumb:

[Mitsubishiman]

Thank you for the information on how to disable tea timer, I actually used ccleaner to disable the function by excluding it in the startup menu, my problem was pretty basic, my PC actually has 72 processes running and yes dispute the fact you would all tell me I do not need that many - I do, I have narrowed it down to the minimum that I use on a daily basis.

Tea timer was slowing down my start-up by using excessive resources for 1 full minute at start-up, varying from 40% to 65% CPU Usage, this is unacceptable and I will not allow any program that is that intensive as a resource hog, that is why I dumped Norton and McAfee for System Suite and/or NOD 32 (I Have 7 PCs)