how do i remove spybot sddelfile from system!?

[Oldguy]

PepiMK,

If I am reading your response correctly, you are saying do none of three things listed in my prior post and instead just delete SDDelFile.exe. Is that correct?

If all I do is delete SDDelFile.exe then what is going to happen when I do a normal restart and during startup the system attempts to execute those 661 RunOnce entries remaining in my registry?

I also received advice on Ticket 702980843 to:
1) delete HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT*shellsddelfile
and in the same message then
2) to then browse to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT*shellsddelfile, cut the name of the second value and paste it in as the data for the default value.

If I follow this advice, having performed 1 as instructed it seems like 2 becomes impossible. Am I missing something here? Is this advice from Ticket 702980843 still relevant? What was its purpose in the first place?

I responded to the advice on Ticket 702980843 with the following but I have received no further reply yet:
"...In the context of better problem description (referring to my post in thread "sqlite3.dll and the Programs folder" at forums.spybot.info/showthread.php?t=21786&highlight=sqlite3.dll) and knowing I was using a beta release you directed me to please advise whether I should continue with the recommended fix and/or take other steps and whether/how I should remove the large number of RunOnce entries in the registry."

Neither you or the author of the response to Ticket 702980843 have dealt with whether there might be a problem with the existing 561 RunOnce entries. However I see other posts in this thread that suggest deletion of those entries as a workable fix for the situation I find myself in.

I'm sorry but I am now really confused and worried about what are the minimal and correct steps to follow to restore my system to normal operation. At least I can still make some use of it in Safe mode. I don't want to further destabilize it or turn it into a brick.

Can you or someone give me a step by step prescription with an explanation of the intended results that will A) remove Spybot and all its components from my system to preclude any further incident like this and B) enable me to reboot my system in normal mode without extended startup problems of the kind I described in my original post and that others here have also described?

Thanks, Thos

[PepiMK]

Well, as you can probably see from the name in the signature of those support tickets, it wasn't me who wrote them. Actually, you're only confusing me now :D by constantly referring to them, since I have no idea what really was in there

And if these entries cause your system to not boot any longer, why do you ask if there might be a problem with that? I surely would call a non-booting a problem, if you ask me

As I said, I have no idea what was excactly written in those support tickets, so all I could do was tell you to get make sure these RunOnce entries will not appear again, and that would be to remove SDDelFile.exe. Removing those RunOnce entries as well is probably optional, since they should vanish when not found on next reboot, but it can't harm to remove them either, so I would suggest you do that as well.

Btw, sqlite3.dll is a simple library to support access to databases. It is not anything that would cause a system to no longer boot correctly - if an application accessing SQLite databases would be run on startup, it probably would display an error message, but nothing that deep into the system.

I would stronly suggest that (deleting SDDelFile.exe and optional deleting RunOnce entries) over
uninstalling/removing Spybot-S&D before everything's fixed - because that would actually a bad idea, making it quite difficult to reverse the changes Spybot-S&D made - and since you mentioned a false positive, that's probably what you want to do. With Spybot-S&D removed, you would have to manually extract and copy normal files and registry files from password protected zip files, which is a bit more difficult than opening the Recovery section and restoring the SQLite library entries.

[Oldguy]

PepiMK,

Thanks for your response. I will proceed as you suggest.

I was unaware that members of Team Spybot had no access to product support ticket responses written by other members of Team Spybot. I thought I was being helpful by providing those references so a Team Member such as yourself could get a more comprehensive picture of the the problem at hand, provide for a better analysis and avoid duplicate or conflicting responses. Lack of access to the product support problem tracking system must make your job and the management of routine support tasks such as consolidating problem identification and tracking, collaborative problem solving, preparing coordinated temporary and permanent fixes and generating release fix lists very dicey at best.

Under such circumstances, what's a poor, uninformed customer like me to do when he becomes man-in-the-middle between two or more support team members who unknowingly provide conflicting or incomplete advice because they can't access problem support records worked on by others?

As I hope you saw in my original post, I did recognize that there was a problem involving startup and before I even knew there was a forum thread such as this one had independently tracked down the immediate cause of that problem to the processing of multiple, duplicate RunOnce entries generated by S&D that were attempting to remove Sqlite3.dll.

Because so far no full explanation of the circumstances under which the failure occurs or what components or parts of S&D are the culprit(s) (only SDDelFile.exe has been fingered as involved but not necessarily as a culprit), and no information about whether the problem would reoccur have been offered. I still have most of the same concerns I had when I first posted. Those were "...without having a theory about how they [the RunOnce entries] got there, why [and when] they multiplied and whether they would return even if deleted [even though you say removing SDDelFile.exe will prevent that] I am in a quandry [regarding whether or what action to take]".

I must say that under the circumstances my level of confidence that the beta product now installed on the failed system is sufficiently free of other defects to trust it to reverse the changes it made, in particular including restoration of registry entries, is not high. It seems folly to risk using the known to be flawed beta product to recover from the false positive identification it made and the subsequent mess that it caused by then permitting it, the same flawed product, to perform various sensitive restoration activities based upon whatever it recorded without having any idea about why the problem occurred in the first place (aside from being triggered by bad identification information contained in the downloaded "signature" files). I am not reassured when I read entries from other forum members such as "...3 days later, [after] uninstalled in safe mode, only to have more than 100 instances of SDDelfile, and at least as many Dr Watson lines showing in task manager..."

Anyway as someone who has obviously gotten involved with a product and a problem that had unexpected consequences far beyond his ability or desire to cope with, I thank you for your time and forbearance. Hopefully I will not have to bother you with newbie questions again.

Regards, Oldguy

PS: At 13:00 USPT I renamed SDDelFile.exe to SDDelFile.badexe, removed 661 RunOnce entries that referred to SDDelFile, surveyed the registry for other occurrences of "sddelfile", restored the startup entries except for TeaTimer.exe and did a warm reboot. At 13:35 USPT the failed system restarted with no apparent problems. No new RunOnce entries appear in the registry. Spybot S&D is disabled but still installed. I will not run it again until there is an official updated version that addresses the original slow startup problem of v1.5.1 that the defective v1.5.1.18 was intended to fix. OG