Another case of failure to immunize completely

[RollingThunder]

Hello everyone,

I'm having difficulty getting the immunize function on Spybot 1.6.0 to work on my computer. I'm running Windows XP SP2. I run Firefox 3.0.1, Microsoft's firewall, and AVG. I've searched around for similar posts and could not find any way to fix the problems that I'm having. Here are some details.

I selected "immunize", and it completed with the following results:

Overall, Spybot's immunize function reports 299199 total items, 245129 protected, and 54070 unprotected.

Under Firefox (16 rows of entries)
Row 4, default (Cookies), 191 unprotected, 0 protected
Row 5, default (Images), 8948 unprotected, 0 protected
Row 12, default (Installations), 8948 unprotected, 0 protected
Row 14, default (Popups), 8948 unprotected, 0 protected
Row 16, default (Popups), 8948 unprotected, 0 protected
All other entries report 0 unprotected

Under Internet Explorer (32 bit) (5 rows of entries)
All entries report 0 unprotected

Under Internet Explorer (32/64 bit) (24 rows of entries)
All entries report 0 unprotected

Under Mozilla (8 rows of entries)
Row 1, default (Cookies), 191 unprotected
Row 4, default (Images), 8948 unprotected
Row 5, default (Installations), 8948 unprotected
Row 7, default (Popups), 8948 unprotected

Under Windows (1 row)
Global (Hosts), 0 unprotected


In the immunization screen, I clicked "undo". The result was 1033 Global (Hosts) objects that coud not be "undone"; i.e., they were left protected after the undo. Everything else was "unprotected".

I re-ran immunize again, and had exactly the same results as I had obtained initially.

I have repeated this process several times, uninstalling (including running the small .reg program) and reinstalling Spybot and obtaining the same results each time.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks, Ed

[spybotsandra]

Hello,

That seems to be a bug in our new version 1.6.
But we have already located and are working on a solution.
As a workaround you can do the following:
Go to the folder:
C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox

There please delete the permissions.sqlite and generate a new file for the hostperm.1 that is empty.
Now please immunize again.
That should solve the problem.

This information is also available in our forum:
http://forums.spybot.info/showthread.php?t=30681

Best regards
Sandra
Team Spybot

[RollingThunder]

Hi Sandra,

Thanks for jumping in and trying to help me.

I went to the thread you mentioned and it seems to apply to Firefox 2, not Firefox 3. I'm running Firefox 3.

Regardless, I went to C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox

There is no file named permissions.sqlite in that directory. I did a search of my entire hard drive, and there is no such file anywhere on my computer.

Any other thoughts or ideas would be appreciated.

Ed

[RollingThunder]

Hello,

I found the permissions.sqlite and hostperm.1 file here: c:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\70unukkd.default and proceeded to delete the permissions.sqlite file and replace the hostperm.1 file with an empty one. There was no impact on the immunization. It still fails to immunize completely.

Again, any help is appreciated.

Ed

[Greyfox]

RollingThunder,

As I understand it, if you are running Firefox 3, then there should NOT be a hostperm.1 file at all, there should only be the permissions.sqlite file.

I suspect that you had both because when you installed Firefox 3, you possibly didn't un-immunise Firefox 2, and then didn't completely remove all of the folders and residue from the Firefox 2 installation before installing the new Firefox 3.

If you delete the hostperm.1 file it should get rid of part of the problem. Hopefully the permissions.sqlite file that you deleted will regenerate.

Hope that helps.

[robert4917]

i just downloaded and installed the 1.6 version and am being told that i don't have adminstrator rights so it can't immunize me fully.

this computer has no user but the administrator. we never installed or changed anything on this computer.

i reinstalled 1.6 -- no change.
what's up? i feared insidious virus infestation but then have read some posts, but only for firefox. but i am using explorer.

should i give up on the new version and reinstall the prior one i have (spybotsd14.exe, installed in may this year)? is there a fix?

i am using vista, by the way. ( is this another example of how vista sucks?)
thanks.

[spybotsandra]

Hello,

Windows Vista might tell you that you are not being allowed to operate at the administration level of your computer.
You can solve this problem as follows:
Right-click the Spybot - Search & Destroy entry in your start menu,
instead of just left-clicking to start it.
Then, choose Run as administrator from the context menu.
You will find a screenshot of this problem in our FAQ:
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/faq/42.html

Best regards
Sandra
Team Spybot

[RollingThunder]

If you delete the hostperm.1 file it should get rid of part of the problem. Hopefully the permissions.sqlite file that you deleted will regenerate.

I tried this and there was no impact. I also found a hostperm.1 file in the Mozilla\Profiles\... directory and deleted it. Again, no impact. Still over 50,000 objects not immunized.

Here is some more background: I used a previous version of Spybot about two years ago with Firefox 2. Then I installed TrendMicro as my anti-virus software. It is incompatible with Spybot, so I had to uninstall Spybot at that time. When Firefox 3 came out, I installed it. Then, more recently, I uninstalled TrendMicro and replaced it with AVG. At that time, I also re-installed Spybot (now version 1.6). I have not been able to successfully immunize since.

Should I uninstall Firefox 3 then reinstall and start over again?

I appreciate the help. Thank you.

Ed

[laurin1]

I deleted the permissions.sqlite file, but it still will not immunize.

[Greyfox]

RollingThunder and Laurin1

I don't know what the status your problem is at the moment, however if you read http://forums.spybot.info/showpost.php?p=225226&postcount=13
it may be of help

[RollingThunder]

Thanks for checking up with us, Greyfox. I've given up. I tried completely uninstalling Firefox 3 and Spybot with no change at all in results. I've read everything that seems to be related on the site here and tried it all. No luck. Currently over 50,000 items failed to immunize.

I'm using Spyware Blaster and checking for problems with Spybot weekly.

Oh, well...

Thanks again to everyone who tried to help.

Ed

[robot202]

That seems to be a bug in our new version 1.6.
But we have already located and are working on a solution.
As a workaround you can do the following:
Go to the folder:
C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox

There please delete the permissions.sqlite and generate a new file for the hostperm.1 that is empty.
Now please immunize again.
That should solve the problem.

This information is also available in our forum:
http://forums.spybot.info/showthread.php?t=30681



I had the problem were my default cookie, images, installations and popups were not immunizing. There was a total of 27,619 unprotected items.

Using SD 1.5.2 did not have any immunization problems, but 1.6.2 had these problems. The above fix worked perfect for me. I spent several hours trying many suggestions in these forums but this was the only thing that worked for me. This is on an old Win2K system using Firefox 2.

Thanks for the help,

Robot

[shade42]

I had the same problem as RollingThunder - using Firefox 3, many items were left unprotected.

I found a work around for most of them. I had to log into each of the accounts on the machine and run Firefox in them once. This included the Guest account (which was turned off) and the Administrator account (which was only accessible via Safe Mode). After this Immunise successfully protected the items for those users.

I was still left with one user's worth of items showing as unprotected. The annoying thing is, Spybot does not tell you which user each line refers to. By trial and error (setting each of my accounts to be a Limited account, so that Spybot could only report on that account's items) I found that my left over unprotected items did not relate to any of my user accounts! It seems Spybot is picking up a phantom account from somewhere.

At this point I gave up, but at least it seems all of my accounts are in fact protected, despite what is reported.

[constans]

Thanks very much for this suggestion shade42, about logging onto each account and opening Firefox. It worked brilliantly! Now I am not only able to immunize my SpyBot, but my whole computer seems to be running faster. Don't know why, but thanks for the tip!