scan stops short of completion

G

Guardian666

New member
Let me begin by saying that I have tried to search for the solution and can't seem to get a hit on it. I might be a bit rusty since I have used Spybot since day one and have NEVER had anything more than the simplest glitches, so if I missed it - apologies in advance. I have tried just about anything I can think of or have seen suggested for "similar" stuff hoping to resolve it but now I feel that maybe its not me and the community should know so we can resolve it.

The scan runs relatively super fast (less than 3-7 minutes on average pretty much always). This is running in advance mode, with NO exceptions or exclusions, and running the full gambit. Overheating, system resources, updates, program version, OS related stuff are not the issue as I would have caught those after 15 years without bugging everyone.

I have a Windows XP SP2 with all proper patches and updates in place. No conflicting applications running. I have limited the system to JUST running Spybot to make sure no conflict. My system is 99% of the time very clean (I am pretty anal about security) so I doubt any malware is blocking the scan. The scan ALWAYS goes to 121552/124243 which is almost at the end and gets there pretty quick but even after leaving it running for countless hours, nothing.

Now the kicker is that neither the application nor the OS or any other application freezes or anything. In fact I can pause or cancel the scan and do anything I want in the meantime, even clean close the application but it will NOT complete the scan for the life of me I don't get it. I have attached a screenshot for what its worth and would appreciate any help. I am running the latest build with the latest updates as of this morning.

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated. Let me know if you need more information than already mentioned to be provided. I love the application and just want to see it do what it was intended to do and do it well, that's all.
 
Gardian666

The counter 124243 in the count indicator 121552/124243 suggests you have the scan set up to detect all items, including the optional Usage tracking group. The 121552 part of the indicator is the number that would be if the Usage group were not ticked. ie a scan without the usage group ticked would currently complete at 121552/121552.

Could you go into SpybotSD, advanced mode. Go to Settings, then File Sets and untick the last three boxes on the page, Usage Tracking, Beta.uti and Track.uti. Then try another scan and see whether it completes
 
Greyfox said:
Gardian666

The counter 124243 in the count indicator 121552/124243 suggests you have the scan set up to detect all items, including the optional Usage tracking group. The 121552 part of the indicator is the number that would be if the Usage group were not ticked. ie a scan without the usage group ticked would currently complete at 121552/121552.

Could you go into SpybotSD, advanced mode. Go to Settings, then File Sets and untick the last three boxes on the page, Usage Tracking, Beta.uti and Track.uti. Then try another scan and see whether it completes
Click to expand...

@Greyfox
Thank you for your help and I did what you said and still no go, it hangs at 121552/121552 and doesn't "finish" as you can see in the attached screenshot, so what now? I am open to suggestions and willing to do my part. Thanks again in advance.
 
Guardian666

First, if you haven't already tried this, clear out all of your caches, temporary files and cookies. Also if you haven't already done so, see if the scan will complete if it is done in safe mode.

As another suggestion, start SpybotSD, go to Tools/Resident and untick both resident SD Helper and Teatimer. Then go to Settings/File Sets and untick all of the boxes except the very top one. This should give you a very short quick scan. If it still hangs, the only thing I can suggest is to un-immunise all items, uninstall SpybotSD and then do a complete new install. Leave downloading the updates until the install is finished.

If it doesn't hang at the completion of the short scan, try reticking the boxes one by one until it hangs again. Perhaps this may provide a further clue as to what is happening.

Sorry I can't come up with a quick fix.
 
Similar scanning issue

I have a similar situation. I just downloaded 1.5.2.2, downloaded updates, immunized, etc. All the things one is supposed to do. I click Check for Problems and although it says "scan is inprogress" nothing is happening. Nothing at all.
 
@Greyfox
Although I know for a fact that my cache is deleted nearly immediately after using my browser (Firefox) which is the only one I use, I will do what you suggested to be sure. I also have tried in safe mode with no luck but again, I will try it with your suggestions and see. I have also done a clean install but maybe I will do another one with the suggestions and see. I will let everyone know what happens and I will try to do it step by step so it it shows a natural logical flow to maybe aid in pinpointing what is going on. On a somewhat related notice, this exact same thing happens on 1 Vista machine out of 2 and 3 xp machines out of 3. We are currently doing a system snap shot comparison to see if there is something substantially different in the app sets that might be interfering. We'll see.

@Angelb63
Although I am sorry for your troubles, I am glad that I am not alone and not losing my mind. Hopefully any resolution we discover will help you resolve yours too.
 
@Guardian666

By regarding your screenshots the counter is showing that Spybot is trying to scan the "Download directories". So I suppose that you have added some directories which you like to scan. There is an undocumented problem in Spybot which isn't fixed yet. Sometimes there are some files or some directories which could cause troubles like freezing the scan. So I'm afraid that you have to deactivate the scan of these directories as long as you couldn't pinpoint which file or which directory is causing this.

P.S.: I vote that Spybot should show which file and which directory it is currently scanning. This could make it easier to track down problems like this.
 
@chi-va
I thought that might be it too as I saw that and thought it was weird that it was showing that but nothing was happening. I have checked the "download directories" setting and it is set to whatever default comes with Spybot, but I will disable it and see what happens.

Thanks for all the help and I will post my results as soon as I can get them done. I also agree that it would be nice if it told you where it was in the grand scheme of things so you can figure out easier what is happening. Maybe they will be nice enough to implement that.
 
If this has not changed in Spybot-S&D 1.5.2 then the default setting for the download directories is no directories. So there shouldn't be any directories if you haven't added yourself. Although I have seen that it has added directories by itself once but I wasn't able to recreate this so it wasn't worth to report it.
 
@chi-va
I didn't think anything of it but when I checked it has the "C:\Windows" and "C:\Program Files" and "C:\Documents and Settings" in there and its on all the machine installations that I have. I don't remember if they were there before but I didn't add anything. Honest :halo:
 
Greyfox said:
Guardian666

First, if you haven't already tried this, clear out all of your caches, temporary files and cookies. Also if you haven't already done so, see if the scan will complete if it is done in safe mode.

As another suggestion, start SpybotSD, go to Tools/Resident and untick both resident SD Helper and Teatimer. Then go to Settings/File Sets and untick all of the boxes except the very top one. This should give you a very short quick scan. If it still hangs, the only thing I can suggest is to un-immunise all items, uninstall SpybotSD and then do a complete new install. Leave downloading the updates until the install is finished.

If it doesn't hang at the completion of the short scan, try reticking the boxes one by one until it hangs again. Perhaps this may provide a further clue as to what is happening.

Sorry I can't come up with a quick fix.
Click to expand...

Quick fix isn't what I was looking for but I was hoping I wouldn't have to work so hard to get a software that was working fine until they decided to update it work again like it should.

To make this quick since I think I have wasted WAY too much time on this with no result to show for it, I have done everything you suggested and even did it inside a clean XP install VM with NOTHING else installed and still same disappointing result.

For now I don't have more time to waste, hopefully the developers will actually take the time and read through people's problem and do something or at least suggest something, the lack of any effort on their part to properly support their application is becoming very disappointing.

And before someone says its free what do you expect, providing a software for free is no excuse for not caring if it works or does what it needs to do. That's a very poor stance to take.
 
Help?

Hrm. When I first installed Spybot-SD, I left the options just as it is. However, I have attempted Advanced Mode several times. First, I went to ignore products. CD-zilla is check by default I think and so are several others. Uncheck them, so all of the products are unchecked. Before a scan, every week, I clean the temp. files, cache, in my browsers. Hope that help,s Guardian. >:D :euro:
 
drragostea said:
Hrm. When I first installed Spybot-SD, I left the options just as it is. However, I have attempted Advanced Mode several times. First, I went to ignore products. CD-zilla is check by default I think and so are several others. Uncheck them, so all of the products are unchecked. Before a scan, every week, I clean the temp. files, cache, in my browsers. Hope that help,s Guardian. >:D :euro:
Click to expand...


I appreciate the help. Yeah I noticed that some items are check by default as well and my policy is to clear them every time that I do a clean install on a machine, so they are all unchecked, so it goes after everything. I also have my Firefox set to destroy and dump ALL information when it closes and I do NOT EVER use IE. As for the temp directories, I have a tweak that clears that usually before running the scan. This is why I am at a loss, I have done everything that can be logically assumed to pose a problem but still nothing :hair:
 
Do you have removed the "Download directories" from Spybot-S&D as suggested? I wonder if someone else or something else have added them or maybe this is really a new default setting in Spybot-S&D 1.5.2? Can anyone confirm this?

By the way, it could be related to the software you use for cleaning the temp directories. May I ask the name of the software?

If you still have the time and the will to fix this problem then we have to use an additional file monitor software in order to see where Spybot-S&D is hanging or whatever.
 
chi-va said:
[...] or maybe this is really a new default setting in Spybot-S&D 1.5.2? Can anyone confirm this?
Click to expand...

No there is no new default setting that adds download directories.
However future detection rules may be able to add a download directory if traces of certain targets are found. Currently there are no such rules public.
 
Yodama said:
No there is no new default setting that adds download directories.
Click to expand...
OK then, since I have the very same problem (see other thread), I will try to remove the directories that are specified in there. I'm not writing this post from my home computer so I cannot tell you what folders are specified in there, but there are at least four, and I sure did not add them myself. (to be continued)
 
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chi-va said:
Do you have removed the "Download directories" from Spybot-S&D as suggested? I wonder if someone else or something else have added them or maybe this is really a new default setting in Spybot-S&D 1.5.2? Can anyone confirm this?

By the way, it could be related to the software you use for cleaning the temp directories. May I ask the name of the software?

If you still have the time and the will to fix this problem then we have to use an additional file monitor software in order to see where Spybot-S&D is hanging or whatever.
Click to expand...

Yes I did remove the download directories and it completes more often than not when that happens but still there are times about 60% of the time that it will still have the same behavior. I did NOT add the directories, they were there and I didn't think they were default but here they are.

I do not mind telling you at all, I use TweakNow the latest version to do the 1-click cleanup that I have configured for it and it deletes all the TEMP directories regardless of their locations and also all the internet caches.

I would appreciate more tools and would be willing to try them and report back, just tell me what and where to get it and it will be done. Thanks.
 
Yodama said:
No there is no new default setting that adds download directories.
However future detection rules may be able to add a download directory if traces of certain targets are found. Currently there are no such rules public.
Click to expand...

Appreciate the confirmation that they are not default but they were there and they got there not just on this machine but others that are having trouble with the same thing. I wonder how they got there :scratch:
 
Ungarsdequebec said:
OK then, since I have the very same problem (see other thread), I will try to remove the directories that are specified in there. I'm not writing this post from my home computer so I cannot tell you what folders are specified in there, but there are at least four, and I sure did not add them myself. (to be continued)
Click to expand...

Yes I had them too before I removed them, mine were "C:\Windows", "C:\Program Files", and "C:\Documents and Settings". If you have the same ones, then it might be something worth looking into to find out how they got there if they are not default added or by any rule that is public. Thanks.
 
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