Spybot 1.6.2 "Unloading User Registry Hives...this may take a while" +2 hours

[john7a8]

Hi,

I booted my XP Pro SP2 laptop this morning and SpybotSD loaded right after McAfee and SpybotSD started a scan. The normal Desktop did not load.

SpybotSD ran for ~1 hour and did not find any problems. When I tried to close it down, the blue title bar changed to "Unloading User Registry Hives...this may take a while" and it has been sitting that way for +2 hours.

The hard drive is being accessed, I can toggle both Caps Lock ad Num Lock so the CPU is alive. I can CTRL+ALT+DEL and load task manager.

I am concerned about shutting Windows down with this registry hives being unloaded.

Please Help!!!!

TIA!

[Nubijean]

Hi! I've just installed 1.63 ang got it running once. Scanned OK, clicked X to close, then got the Unloading Hives message. I had read your message, so tried to be patient, but after about 45 minutes of no HD activity I gave up and shut machine down. I thought, since I've just done a clean install of Win98SE the registry can't be large.
:oops:
Now, Spybot will not load and run. Gets almost to end of progress bar and no further. Don't know if shutting down caused the problem. Ideas anyone? Thanks.

[adamlaughlin]

Hey I am having the same problem with my computer.
It's my fault because the power cord got pulled out of the back and this started happening immediately. But that's how it started.

It happens in safe mode, it happens after I used the OS disc for System Restore and I also tried a startup repair. The problem persists.
When I try to close Spybot it does indeed say in the title bar "Unloading User registry hives might take awhile..." and it locks right up. No new processes will start and Windows offers to terminate those (all) which do not respond, graying out the screen. Caps lock and such still work (info: this is because the keyboard is on a low level IRQ so that CTRL+ALT+DEL always works when the motherboard is receiving many signals) so it's not a hardware problem and my RAM passes the Windows memory tests.

The problem happens whether or not I try to exit Spybot; I have only a few seconds of time and sending more instructions to the processor seems to accelerate the lock-up, triggering this "unloading" of the registry earlier and making all processes hang. Like I said, I've tried using this time to run the Spybot uninstaller but there isn't enough.


I hope this is enough information for someone out there to help us, the problem is still fairly recent but needs a good bump. I'll add on more information as I try more repairs but I'd like to avoid a full reformat.

Thanks for any attention to this.
A.L.

P.S.:

I also am running AVG with SpySweeper alongside it and therefore I have three resident shields plus Windows Defender running, this could be caused by conflicts between the processes. They tend to be intensive and may be caught in loops?

[adamlaughlin]

I have resolved this issue by using System Restore again to 11:00am this morning. If anyone recently upgraded Safari, you have a restore point today. ;)

I want to keep subscribed to this and if an expert is reading please feel free to ask me more questions to help the others out if they don't have SR enabled. That sucked!

Fortunately when I closed to Spybot Window this time, I saw the same message - unloading user registry hives might take awhile... and it only took less than a second to close. It's been a while and everything is normal again.

[avalon410]

How do I reboot or turn off my computer???? Why is McAfee disabled and can't

Installed Spybot 1.6.2 on my Windows XP Home SP3. After running for the first time and instructing to fix problems listed in red, all but one problem was fixed, associated w/coupon bar adaware root key files. Instructions said to reboot and possibly problem would be eliminated then. Tried to reboot, Windows message shows up with saving information bar, says stopping will cause info to be lost. I can see "unloading user registry hives may take awhile" in title bar at top of Spybot window. It's been there well over an hour. Checked Task Manager, which says only Spybot is running. Was able to reconnect to IE to look up problems and send this message, but McAfee real-time scanning and spyware scanning seems to have been disabled by Spybot - the icon is gone from the tray, and so is the icon for Avast!. McAfee says my computer and files are not protected, and when I say "Fix" nothing happens, Now I am afraid if I turn off my computer I will have trouble restarting. If I use system restore, won't it just put back all the malware? PLEASE HELP!

[noel-pr7]

How do I reboot or turn off my computer???? Why is McAfee disabled and can't

Installed Spybot 1.6.2 on my Windows XP Home SP3. After running for the first time and instructing to fix problems listed in red, all but one problem was fixed, associated w/coupon bar adaware root key files. Instructions said to reboot and possibly problem would be eliminated then. Tried to reboot, Windows message shows up with saving information bar, says stopping will cause info to be lost. I can see "unloading user registry hives may take awhile" in title bar at top of Spybot window. It's been there well over an hour. Checked Task Manager, which says only Spybot is running. Was able to reconnect to IE to look up problems and send this message, but McAfee real-time scanning and spyware scanning seems to have been disabled by Spybot - the icon is gone from the tray, and so is the icon for Avast!. McAfee says my computer and files are not protected, and when I say "Fix" nothing happens, Now I am afraid if I turn off my computer I will have trouble restarting. If I use system restore, won't it just put back all the malware? PLEASE HELP!

why do you have Mcafee and Avast both installed on your computer, avalon410? un-install either Mcafee or avast as it's not good to have both of them installed and loaded onto an XP computer.

[adamlaughlin]

well this problem began occuring for me when I tried to install three different antivirus programs with active shields on top of antispyware, some with AS built in. It's probably the cause of the problem in each case, and in each case system restore is the best way to fix it. System Restore can be performed from your rescue disk but is irreversible when restored this way.

[avalon410]

why do you have Mcafee and Avast both installed on your computer, avalon410? un-install either Mcafee or avast as it's not good to have both of them installed and loaded onto an XP computer.

Thanks for your reply. McAfee was installed first as my anti-virus software. Nevertheless, my computer became infected with Spyware Protect 2009 and other malware. I researched (generic) instructions for removal of the infection, which said to disable Sys Restore, load and sequentially run each of MalwareBytes + Avast or AVG, + Spybot S&D or Webroot Spysweeper, so that is what I did. MalwareBytes took care of the Trojan, and Avast found and repaired other problems. I didn't run into any difficulties until I ran Spybot. When I posted, I was afraid of crashing my system, but I did not get a reply and so I reran Spybot. Things seem to be running o.k. now, and I have re-enabled sysrestore. I will uninstall McAfee, since it seems to be useless compared to Avast.

[adamlaughlin]

you know mcafee won't be so terrible, it does pick up a virus from time to time which I don't see other scanners find, and they aren't always false positives. I use virustotal.com a lot, which allows users to upload and scan a file with over 40 virus scanners at once... good for comparisons.

Avira AntiVir has a free version with many, many features and has the most robust resident shield I have ever run on my machine. Keep your other antivirus software, just don't run the shields or programs until you have to. Let them update themselves and you'll have many lists of definitions to scan with, but just run the resident shield or "guard" on Avira AntiVir and it should pick up enough without causing problems. Run the other programs' scanners when you are unsure.

[Bob-Formby]

Dell Inspiron, Windows XP service pack 3.

Having used Spybot for years I'm now getting this problem. I have just removed Spybot and downloaded latest version - same thing happened.
After immunisation, this message appears at the top of the screen and the machine just hangs - can't even get task manager to run. No other applications running.
Seen it mentioned on lots of forums but yet to see a solution.

Unloading registry hives might take a while ...

[spybotsandra]

Hello,

The up-/unloading is done by Windows, all we do is tell Windows to up-/unload the registry hives we've previously loaded.
Or do you maybe have multiple Windows installations?

This thread (http://forums.spybot.info/showthread.php?t=48057&highlight=registry+hives) in our forum should also help.

Best regards
Sandra
Team Spybot

[bobsuruncle]

It would appear that once this message comes up, that nothing actually happens no matter how long you wait.

Is the recommendation that we do the following:

1. Use Ctrl-Alt-Del to close the Spybot program
2. Shutdown and restart computer

If so, what will happen to our computer if the User Registry Hives haven't be unloaded by Windows? Does our computer return to "normal" after the restart or do we now have to do a "Restore to an earlier time" process?

Pls advise. Many thanks.