Spybot-S&D 1.6, beta 1

Ah, I misunderstood. I thought you were saying that if you searched on something that was an exact single result topic match in the index it wasn't hanging for you. :)

Thanks for the further clarification on the partial scanning. After reading your post and now looking more carefully I see what you mean.

I am, however, running XP but still do not see "regular" or "heuristic" headers - nor any headers anywhere in fact. Am I missing something obvious here too?

It would be nice if the interface could show that more clearly at some point in the future. Perhaps either separate the list with a gap and show "Regular:" above the first and "Heuristic:" above the second. Or it might look even cleaner if you had just one list (showing only one entry for each file) and then had separate "Regular" and "Heuristic" columns for the results. Of course, I suppose the trade-off there is that it might get cramped (and/or require using the scrollbar to see everything).

Would it perhaps help to [eventually] change the entire way this is done and have partial checks load the full program interface? In other words, add "Scan with Spybot-S&D" to the Explorer context menu and do away with the properties tab method. Would that do anything for [post-interface/database load] scan performance?

Of course that would be more of a longer term goal request. Certainly not as important as turning the beta gold. :)

Quite frankly, I'm just happy to have the feature at all. It's not really "slow" in the sense of being unusable - just slower that the regular scan. Ultimately not that big of a deal.

Thanks again!
 
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In the long term, a system service will keep a scanner ready (even now, we could probably misuse TeaTimer for that, which has a scanner ready - but it is not used by everyone), so that would make that unnecessary.

That could probably lead to a separate scanner window, right ;) (which would have the additional advantage of possibly allowing to be scripted for other single-file scanning purposes than from the Explorer as well)

I attached a screenshot on how it should look to this post. That shows that it should look quite like you suggested :)
The background: blog entry. Beginning with XP, Microsoft shipped version 6 of the "Common Controls" libraries. Only with this version, these headers between list items are supported, and they do not ship that version for older Windows versions. This version 6 is responsible for most of the change in look in XP, and applications need to include a "manifest" that tells Windows that they should use this newer version. Windows Explorer has one, I just tested with Total Commander, and it's fine as well. Are you maybe using some other file manager and opening the dialogs from there?
 
Speed improvement, Annoying dialog

Greetings

Very significant improvement in scan speed on my system:

v.1.5.2.20 (full scan) - 30 minutes

v.1.6.0.25 (full scan): - 14 minutes

Also much faster startup for Spybot and Teatimer, although Teatimer is still much slower starting up than it used to in 1.4 and earlier.

Platform: Win XP Pro SP2, 32-bit Intel Pentium 4 Processor 2.0GHz, 1 GB RAM

Though, one annoyance for me is inability to turn of "temporary files cleaner" dialog which is popping up on startup in this version.
I know it has reason to be there, but since I like to manually check my temp files, It would be nice to have some option too turn off that dialog from appearing at startup.

Maybe there is some way to turn it off in beta or I should hope for that in future final release?
 
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TeaTimer again

Sorry for posting in this section but Teatimer slow startup lingers on in this version too. I've been searching through forums and never found real solution. Is it only on some configurations or is it general problem?

I'm having this issue ever since 1.5 and it is really bothering me because I use TeaTimer as my resident protection.

Can you finally clarify this Teatimer issue? Thanks :)
 
Firefox listed twice in Immunization Window

First off great program & forum. Thanks

I looked for an answer to this minor problem but only found a couple of threads that did not have a concrete answer or I just did not see it.

Issue: Firefox v3 RC 3 is listed twice in Immunization Window of Spybot v1.6b1.

My Profile is not in the default location which would be in WinXP:

%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\

but located in C:\Program Files/xxxxxx

Is there a registry entry I can edit to remove the 2nd Fx listing?

or

Perhaps a workaround to remove the 2nd. listing. I have already tried a full Fx and Spybot uninstall then reinstalled Fx first then Spybot 1.6 beta 1but the second entry returns.

Thank you in advance.
 
Decided to try out the beta a nice improvement in scanning speed, a full scan went from around 8 minutes down to around 3.

Would it be possible to add an option to disable the tip of the day though?
 
SSD1.6beta1 on WinME

Very nice job, especially on the expanded Immunization page. K-Meleon browser is 'protected' now as well as Firefox 20014, Operas 8xx and 927, and also IE6 (fwiw). Some anomalies that are in SSD152 remain for me in this beta (will take those to another thread), but a few minor graphics glitches(?) are new - the tiny 'favicon' images seem somehow corrupted (like scanlines through most of them so they appear a bit ghostly and incomplete on the Immunization page and a few other places).

A bit rough on the initial update and scan, but the beta settled in quite well after a few adjustments. Comparative currently:

SSD152 Immunize=55136 scantime=17:11
SSD16beta1 Immunize=98988 scantime=11:06

Lol, Tip of the Day's a good way to tell the two apart for me :)
 
@niko32: TeaTimer starts up slowly? Or does it just take longer until its icon appears? TeaTimer scans all running processes, so a growing database size could be the reason; in which case the improvement for the Explorer plugin ("single file scan") would be something TeaTimer would earn an improvement from as well.

@GrailKnight: browsers are usually detected by looking for their prefs.js (preferences) file. If you use just one, I would recommend that you search your harddisk for any prefs.js file, and rename the unused one (make sure it's a Firefox prefs.js, other Mozilla products use files of the same name; the folder usually makes it clear what it belongs to).

@Broken Hope: I did add a boolean tweak named "DisableHintOfTheDay" for beta 2, works similar to the other recent ones on the bugtracker :)
 
Speed

I have installed the 1.6 beta on both my home PC and my work PC and have completely different experiences on the two computers. Both run Windows XP Pro SP2 and the hardware components are similar. The major difference is that the work PC is connected to a network.

With version 1.5 both had similar times for scans. At home, 1.6 runs noticeable faster than 1.5. At work, 1.6 is very significantly slower. For example, this morning I started a scan before I left for a meeting at 9am. It is now 12:40pm and the progress bar is between a third and half way.

Any ideas why?
 
pfrank said:
I have installed the 1.6 beta on both my home PC and my work PC and have completely different experiences on the two computers. Both run Windows XP Pro SP2 and the hardware components are similar. The major difference is that the work PC is connected to a network.

With version 1.5 both had similar times for scans. At home, 1.6 runs noticeable faster than 1.5. At work, 1.6 is very significantly slower. For example, this morning I started a scan before I left for a meeting at 9am. It is now 12:40pm and the progress bar is between a third and half way.

Any ideas why?
Click to expand...

A followup: I have been away from my computer all day except for two 10 minute periods before this. It is now about 14:30 and the scan that I started at 09:00 is now about two thirds done according to the progress bar. The only foreground process running during this time has been the scan. It appears that the scan frequently stalls for several seconds before continuing.
 
Now that's quite spooky!
We had stalls on huge temp folders, but that was also with 1.5, that's why 1.6 is now offering to clean it up.
Do those "stalls" mean that nothing happens, or is the hard disk lamp showing heavy disk access in that time?
Is there a difference regarding antivirus application between those machines? AVs might be a bit conflicting in that they scan each file before it's processed by Spybot-S&D, but even that should - in theory - be reduced; unless the AV would now see more suspicious things in Spybot than before.
 
Teatimer

PepiMK said:
@niko32: TeaTimer starts up slowly? Or does it just take longer until its icon appears? TeaTimer scans all running processes, so a growing database size could be the reason; in which case the improvement for the Explorer plugin ("single file scan") would be something TeaTimer would earn an improvement from as well.
Click to expand...

It takes longer until icon appears. :) I watched it in task manager during startup and it seems that Teatimer.exe very slowly consumes memory until it reaches around 40mb and then icon appears. So I guess it is scanning.

Usually Teatimer Icon appears after 1min and 30s and sometimes Icon just won't appear for even 3 or more minutes.
Problem is that it hogs my CPU on 99% during that time, hence making almost impossible and very slow to run any other program and that is very annoying, especially when I have to do something quickly, but instead I wait and pray for icon to appear and release my computer from it's grasp. :sad:
 
PepiMK said:
@GrailKnight: browsers are usually detected by looking for their prefs.js (preferences) file. If you use just one, I would recommend that you search your harddisk for any prefs.js file, and rename the unused one (make sure it's a Firefox prefs.js, other Mozilla products use files of the same name; the folder usually makes it clear what it belongs to).


That explains a lot and I know exactly where the extra prefs.js is located. My backup of Fx that I create daily during beta testing.

Appreciate the quick response.

Thanks
Click to expand...
 
PepiMK said:
Now that's quite spooky!
We had stalls on huge temp folders, but that was also with 1.5, that's why 1.6 is now offering to clean it up.
Do those "stalls" mean that nothing happens, or is the hard disk lamp showing heavy disk access in that time?
Is there a difference regarding antivirus application between those machines? AVs might be a bit conflicting in that they scan each file before it's processed by Spybot-S&D, but even that should - in theory - be reduced; unless the AV would now see more suspicious things in Spybot than before.
Click to expand...

During the stalls I did not notice any disk activity according to the lamp. I noticed the stalls by watching the count in the status bar; it stopped incrementing. There is a difference in antivirus applications. My home PC uses AVG free v8. The work PC uses the corporate version of Norton AV.
 
PepiMK said:
I attached a screenshot on how it should look to this post. That shows that it should look quite like you suggested :)
Click to expand...

Unfortunately [for me], on the 4 XP systems I have access to (one of which is a rather fresh XP SP2 install), that is not what I see. Instead I see this:

spybotpropertiespanelyk8.jpg


I do see it properly under Vista though. Just no luck under XP.

I've done some initial searching on Common Controls and do seem to have it installed (at least I find mscomctl.ocx and comctl32.ocx). And I tried installing the latest CC updates from Microsoft (as well as the VB6 runtime package which some sites I found suggested). I even tried to manually register comctl32.ocx with REGSVR32 which another site claimed could help. Nothing worked.

I would guess if I'm seeing this on multiple systems it might be a general issue (or at least not uncommon), so I'll keep trying to figure out what's wrong and post the fix if I find it. With enabling this tab now being in the plan for an install option with 1.6, it may end up being useful for others if I can figure out why it's not displaying properly for me.

Of course, if you used separate columns for the "Malware" and "Heuristic" results, Common Controls issues wouldn't be a problem - and you'd have better compatibility with pre-XP systems... ;) :D: But I suppose if the long term goal is for an interface based method anyway, it's not worth worrying about.

Thanks yet again for the additional info! :)
 
Unfortunately I encountered a failure in the "automation" settings:
When having checked
"automatically run ..on systemstart"
and then later tried to uncheck this box it didn`t work.

I could check "no automation" and automation was finished but now it cannot be reactivated. Both "green dots" were seen simultaneously.

BTW: I cannot find this registry entry to disable temp folder cleaning.
Neither in HKCU nor in HKLM or by searching. :oops:
 
barbossa:

The problem is usually caused by denying the registry changes in TeaTimer when changing the automation for SpybotSD.exe.

To correct the problem:
  • Go into Spybot > Mode > Advanced mode > Settings > Settings.
  • Check "Run program once at next system startup" and allow the registry changes.
  • Then check "No automation" and allow the registry change.
 
1.6 is much faster than 1.52 . thanks . will there be setting for ff and opera like in 1.5 , or am i dreaming that there were protection for ff and opera ?
 
@jerry66: Immunization knows a handful of Mozilla variants and Opera as well.
No direct plugin yet though; a Firefox suggestion is on the bugtracker, if anyone with Firefox addon (XUL + DLL combination) knowledge wants to help, he or she would be very welcome, until then it would probably have to wait until someone finds the time to work himself into FF from scratch.

@barbossa: this one? will work only with 1.6 beta 2 which is not out yet, and of course it does not exist, these tweaks need to be created by hand, they're not very "official" ;)
 
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