Update process: a little too complex?

[Nicholas the Italian]

May I suggest to make the update process a little more straightforward?

Currently (I'm talking about 1.5) you have to:
1) click the "update" button;
2) click "search";
3) choose a server and click "continue";
4) select the items you want to download an click "donwload";
5) wait (BTW, does the "cancel" button now work? it didn't in 1.4);
6) click "exit".

Now, IMO steps 2 and 3 should be avoided, and the recommended/important updates (those generally marked with a ! - BTW, maybe something more flashy/visible, like bold or red?) should be selected by default.
In other words, I think the options should be set in the configuration (or only asked the first time), and then the update process should work as follows:
1) you click the "update" button;
2) you get the list of available updates, check that the items you want are selected, and click "download";
3) wait;
4) click exit.

On another note, I'm using the Italian language, why does it keep notifying me English-language updates? Who cares?
And does it show Italian-language updates, or doesn't it?

Finally, of course, it would be awesome to have automatic updates as an option.

Well, just expressing my ideas here, hope this helps.
Any other opinion on this?

PS: ah, great work! Keep it going!

[jaban]

Click on the Mode menu, choose "Advanced mode". Click the Yes button to confirm your choice.

Click on the Settings button.

Go to the "Settings" (there's a settings sub-section in the settings section...).

Scroll down to the Automation tree, and find "Web update".

Checkmark the first two options:
1. Search the web for new versions at each program start.
2. Download updated include files if available online.

Viola - it automatically updates itself every time you open it.

[Nicholas the Italian]

Cool, thanks but that's not exactly what I'm suggesting.

[PepiMK]

2. Is already avoided if you click the update button on the welcome page and not on the toolbar at the left.

Important updates should already be pre-selected, and were so when I just tried.

English updates are always shown because they're the base for everything; if something Italian wouldn't be complete, Spybot falls back to English for that part. So you probably should care, unless you want empty information or texts somewhere

[Nicholas the Italian]

Important updates should already be pre-selected, and were so when I just tried.

Uhm, weren't last time, but I'll have to check again.
[edit]Ah ok, probably related to a setting in the settings page. Maybe should be checked by default?[/edit]

Anyway, is there a particoular technical or philosophical reason for which there's no real "automatic update" (kinda "install-spybot-and-forget", like antivirus and other security software)?
You can't even plan updates from the internal Settings > Scheduler option.
Or am I missing something?

[md usa spybot fan]

You can't even plan updates from the internal Settings > Scheduler option.
Or am I missing something?

Your missing something! Take a look at the following thread for example:

• Spybot-SD Resident (TeaTimer) Automatic Updates
  http://forums.spybot.info/showthread.php?t=18069

[Nicholas the Italian]

Your missing something! Take a look at the following thread for example:

• Spybot-SD Resident (TeaTimer) Automatic Updates
  http://forums.spybot.info/showthread.php?t=18069

Well... ok you can do it, I didn't know that, thanks

So:
1) go to the Regedit, find the following key (I use a non password protected account) [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Lsa]
"limitblankpassworduse"=dword:00000001 and change the value to 0;
2) select Spybot > Mode > Advanced mode
3) go into Settings > Scheduler;
4) add the following: "C:\Program Files\Spybot - Search & Destroy\SpybotSD.exe" /autoupdate /autoclose /taskbarhide;
5) from time to time (well, once a week since weekly updates are enough) you'll see your pc go mad, you don't understand why until you see spybot appear, work a little and then close.

In other words I have to go to the advanced interface, find the scheduler, put in parameters I have to look for in the guide, possibly mess up with Windows Registry, and have the whole Spybot application loading each time, just to keep my system up-to-date?
What percentage of users do you expect to do that? Above 2%?

If you want to use the OS scheduler that's fair (I have it disabled and my antivirus still keeps itself up-to-date, but I guess there's no real reason to have it disabled), but you should have a one-click auto-update enable option (that is, a shortcut for steps 1-2-3-4 above), and it should load only the updater, not the entire application (in other words, it should work quite silently, just informing you if he could update or not).
This is how I see it and other security softwares work, of course I understand there may be technical difficulties.

[Nicholas the Italian]

There's another problem I experienced yesterday (on another PC). Not sure if it's a unique problem or a real bug, I'll have to reproduce (I can't until next wednesday).

When you're downloading updates, can you actually click "cancel" and exit? It didn't work.
Internet connection had went down, but Spybot didn't detect that. It kept trying each item for a lot of seconds, just to abort saying "wrong checksum" and going on with the next one.
I had to kill Spybot.

Spybot 1.5.1.16 on Win XP SP1 (yes, 1).

[PepiMK]

Abort function in SDUpdate

That new SDUpdate.exe is not available yet Cancel has been improved a bit there; not yet perfect, but without that ugly entry-by-entry-retry.