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View Full Version : getting bad spybotsd.ini from safer-networking.org



btfool
2006-03-03, 14:53
I downloaded Spybot 1.4 twice for 2 computers at a friends house, and neither copy worked...

One copy ran for just a few seconds, and only checked for 29 problems. Others have had this problem, too:
http://forums.spybot.info/showthread.php?t=2417
http://forums.spybot.info/showthread.php?t=2462

The other copy would not scan at all. It kept saying that I had to run an update first, but when I hit the update button it would not find any new updates.
Other people are reporting this as well:
http://forums.spybot.info/showthread.php?t=2734

I noticed that instead of a list of about 6 servers (BN, See Cure, and Safer Networking) in the update mirror drop-down list, there was only 1 that I had never heard of before (Eon in Australia). I suspect that this person may be experiencing this too, but they never followed up in their thread:
http://forums.spybot.info/showthread.php?t=2301

I read through a lot of threads in the forums, and I ended up looking at the File Sets on both computers. Both had only 2 entries, "Spybot - Search & Destroy" and "Usage Tracking" which is quite wrong, as there should be a much longer list of file sets.

Then I found this post by md, http://forums.spybot.info/showpost.php?p=11637&postcount=3, which got my curiosity going about the spybotsd.ini file. I checked my update download log, and I had downloaded spybotsd.ini 9 times between 3:11am US Central and 3:38am US Central (see my upload, 417).

At about 3:46am, I decided to download a copy of spybotsd.ini straight from safer-networking.org, at http://www.safer-networking.org/updates/spybotsd.ini Check out what I got: 418. Yes, a spybotsd.ini for version 1.1 with only 1 dead server listed! What the heck happened???

I downloaded it again at 4:11am, and I got a valid version 1.4 spybotds.ini (which is 43k but the forum limits file size to 39.1k, so I can't upload it). I copied it over "c:\program files\spybot - search & destroy\updates\online.ini", and now Spybot updates and scans correctly.

Cheers,
btfool
:bigthumb:

md usa spybot fan
2006-03-03, 15:24
What follows is totally speculation but I have seen a similar thing happen just prior to the weekly updates being delivered.

Since the updates are controlled by the spybotsd.ini file, that file must be changed twice while the new updates are being uploaded to update servers. Once to reflect that no updates are available and again when all the update servers have been updated.

It is possible that your unsuccessful attempts to update were during the period of time while the latest updates were being uploaded to the update servers and being verified.