scan stops short of completion

[Guardian666]

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.

[Greyfox]

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

[Guardian666]

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
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.

[Greyfox]

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.

[Angelb63]

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.

[Guardian666]

@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.

[chi-va]

@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.

[Guardian666]

@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.

[chi-va]

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.

[Guardian666]

@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