jjjdavidson
2008-09-06, 00:29
I have four Windows XP systems recently updated to Spybot 1.6.0, and I have a frustrating problem with two of them. I posted about part of the problem last week, but I've done more research and that post's out of date.
On the two problem systems, when Spybot 1.6.0 is run normally under the administrator account, it ignores all other user accounts. Only the admin account is immunized. Only the admin account's registry settings are scanned.
To perform a full scan of these systems, I have to run Spybot as an administrator--then I have to individually run a full Spybot scan and immunize on each user account! Yes, 1.6.0 runs a lot faster than 1.5.2, but I still don't want to run it four or five times to do one full scan.
What I've found: Normally, when Spybot starts up (even before the "Loading" progress bar appears), it opens the registry hives for all user accounts on the system. If the account is logged on, Spybot uses the existing key under HKEY_USERS; otherwise it creates a new key for each account named PE_C_ACCOUNTNAME under HKEY_USERS. Spybot keeps these hives open until it shuts down (and leaves them if it gets killed), leading to problems like MrGreg's thread or this thread from March.
But on the two problem systems, Spybot never opens the additional PE_C_ keys, not when it's scanning, not when it's immunizing. So it never sees any user account except the administrator account.
Any idea why Spybot behaves differently on these two machines? Is there some setting I've zorched that says, "Only scan the logged-on account"?
And, perhaps, could the next version of Spybot lock registry hives only on an as-needed basis, so that the other side effects don't arise?
Thanks!
On the two problem systems, when Spybot 1.6.0 is run normally under the administrator account, it ignores all other user accounts. Only the admin account is immunized. Only the admin account's registry settings are scanned.
To perform a full scan of these systems, I have to run Spybot as an administrator--then I have to individually run a full Spybot scan and immunize on each user account! Yes, 1.6.0 runs a lot faster than 1.5.2, but I still don't want to run it four or five times to do one full scan.
What I've found: Normally, when Spybot starts up (even before the "Loading" progress bar appears), it opens the registry hives for all user accounts on the system. If the account is logged on, Spybot uses the existing key under HKEY_USERS; otherwise it creates a new key for each account named PE_C_ACCOUNTNAME under HKEY_USERS. Spybot keeps these hives open until it shuts down (and leaves them if it gets killed), leading to problems like MrGreg's thread or this thread from March.
But on the two problem systems, Spybot never opens the additional PE_C_ keys, not when it's scanning, not when it's immunizing. So it never sees any user account except the administrator account.
Any idea why Spybot behaves differently on these two machines? Is there some setting I've zorched that says, "Only scan the logged-on account"?
And, perhaps, could the next version of Spybot lock registry hives only on an as-needed basis, so that the other side effects don't arise?
Thanks!