Running Spybot using scheduled tasks

[RobDickson]

Hello everybody.

Last month, I set up Windows Scheduled tasks to run Spybot weekly:
"C:\Program Files\Spybot - Search & Destroy\SpybotSD.exe" /AUTOCHECK

with Spybot set to update automatically when it starts.

I've also tried:
"C:\Program Files\Spybot - Search & Destroy\SpybotSD.exe" /AUTOCHECK /AUTOUPDATE

Both these seemed to work OK, with Spybot finishing its scan, and showing anything it finds, without fixing anything, and without closing down.

However, this month, things don't seem to work as they did before. Windows Scheduled Tasks shows that the task has run, but I never get to see the Spybot program when it's run, so I can't see what problems it has found. It's as if I'd added the /AUTOCLOSE switch.

Looking at the statistics, I can see that Spybot has actually run successfully, but it would be nice to see the program's results in the usual way.

This happens on two PCs. Both PCs run WinXP-SP2, and Spybot 1.4.

Does anybody have any ideas?

[md usa spybot fan]

If you were running with the /AUTOUPDATE parameter, a possible cause could be that during the update of 2006-01-12 there was an update to the "Advanced detection library" (advcheck.dll). When the download of that update completed Spybot was terminated and restarted to refresh the advcheck.dll being use. If that happened, Spybot would most likely restarted without the /AUTOCHECK parameter that you have in the schedule task and therefore run a scan.

[RobDickson]

Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately, I found it a bit difficult to understand.

If I understand you correctly, what you have described would explain why Spybot might not have run correctly when it downloaded the 2006-01-12 update (is that 12th January 2006, or 1st December 2006?), but not why it has failed to run since then.

[md usa spybot fan]

Oops, wrong year, 2007-01-12 (yyyy-mm-dd).

In other words one of the updates on January 12, 2007 terminated and restarted Spybot to complete the update. If you were running with /AUTOUPDATE, it would have acted like /AUTOUPDATE /AUTOCLOSE and then Spybot would have restarted.

[RobDickson]

I'm with you now.

I've just run the task manually, and it ran as I expected it to.

I thought that it had misbehaved a few times before, but I must be mistaken - maybe it only misbehaved once.

Thanks for your time.

[md usa spybot fan]

According to the following post by PepiMK in the thread dealing with problems encountered with last week's update to the advcheck.dll file (Very long duration of scan after update (was: problem running scan)), it is likely that there will be another update to the "Advanced detection library" (advcheck.dll) tomorrow.

• http://forums.spybot.info/showpost.p...&postcount=175

When that update is received, Spybot will most likely be terminated and restarted again in order to load the new advcheck.dll into Spybot-S&D before scans can be run.

[RobDickson]

Thanks. I'll update Spybot manually, and then I won't hit the same problem again.

Thanks again for your time.