SpyBot 1.6.2.46 won't immunize Windows Global (hosts)

[pac37312]

The help file says that I may be immunizing without supervisory rights if some items do not immunize, but I can't see options to adjust for immunizing. Anyone have ideas on this? Thanks.

[md usa spybot fan]

pac37312

Are you running Windows Vista?

In Vista you must elevate the administrator rights in order to perform certain functions within Spybot-S&D. There are several ways to do that:
Elevate the administrative rights for a single running:
Instead of double clicking (left clicking) to start Spybot, right-click and select "Run as administrator" from the context menu.
Permanently elevate.
If you are running Spybot from a desktop shortcut for example, right click on the desktop shortcut and select Properties.
Then go into Application Compatibility and select "Run As administrator".
_____

Other software such as ZoneAlarm and STOPzilla can prevent the immunization of Windows Global (hosts). See:
Various reasons for incomplete immunization
http://forums.spybot.info/showthread.php?t=36272

[scoffman]

This is usually due to another process or service actively accessing the Hosts file (C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts). If you manually try to delete the Hosts file you'll get the following error:

Error Deleting File or Folder.
Cannot delete hosts: It is being used by another person or program.
Close any programs that might be using the file and try again.

You could spend a LOT of time trying to figure out what applications/processes and/or services are accessing the Hosts file and still not be able to terminate them to gain access to the Hosts file - and this is assuming you know how to use such obscure command line functions such as TASKLIST and TASKKILL. (For kicks if you are interested, run CMD and type tasklist /SVC to see how much is REALLY running in the background on your system... you will see multiple processes like svchost.exe, and at least one of those svchost processes running as much as 30 core Windows services. This is normal...)

The easiest way to work around this is to boot to Safe Mode without network support, run Spybot and Immunize again. You might have to Immunize a couple times, but in most cases this should work. This applies to all versions of Windows XP. I'm not certain about Vista, but I believe this trick should work with it as well.

Scoffman

[quabbin]

I also have had this problem with Global Hosts, which only began in the last month or two. I am running Vista Home Premium with the current MS updates.

In the past Spy Sweeper has blocked immunization updates, so I routinely shut it down before performing Spybot updates, and that procedure had worked perfectly. With the recent problem I thought that perhaps another AS or AV application was responsible for the difficulty. Accordingly I also shut down Norton Internet Security and Windows Defender, the only other apps with active protection features, but doing so did not fix the problem.

As suggested, I ran Spybot as an administrator, but that did not work.

Fortunately running in Safe mode did work, but this is a bit of a kluge. Is there a more convenient solution?

Thanks for your input on this problem.