Quote Originally Posted by Terminator View Post
When I first installed Norton Internet Security 2005 a few years back it locked me out of my Dial-up connection so I couldn't register it until I'd downloaded all the updates, tinkered with the firewall and only then it would let me register it. After using it for a year and having numerous problems with it I ditched it and went with Zone Alarm and AVG.

To cut a long story short after loads of problems with differant Firewalls and Anti-Virus programs I upgraded to the latest version of Zone Alarm and Avast! Antivirus and I've used them ever since.
For what it's worth, I popped over here to see if I could find anything posted about the HOSTS file, and it's size possibly effecting browsing speeds, and found this thread.

I too had noticed over the years my browsing speed had got noticebly slower, and finally decided to set aside some time to try and get to the bottom of it. Checking my HOSTS file, I saw it was around 282kb in size, which seemed large, so I backed it up and replaced it with a "clean" one as below;


# Copyright (c) 1993-1995 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows NT.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host

127.0.0.1 localhost



When I launched my browser, and connected to the Internet, my homepage came up within a second, rather than the 15-20 seconds that it had been taking before.

Having a look at the old HOSTS file, I could see that there were around 8300 entries that had been made by me using Spybot.

What I decided to do was simply go with the "clean" HOSTS file, and turn off the HOSTS file immunisation function within Spybot.

Unfortunately, I seem to be effected with the "large HOSTS file slows down browsing" problem the same as the OP, but I know and understand it's not Spybot's "fault"... the cause is my computer's configuration of software / hardware / OS etc etc etc, and / or Microsoft's implementation of the HOSTS file and how it works, which causes the... incompatability, for want of a better expression.

I guess what I'm saying is that yes, I get the problem too, so it's not just the OP, but I know it's up to me to decide if I want to sacrifice the protection over the speed of browsing for my system, for just that one part of the Spybot suite, so to speak.

I will always have the greatest respect for people like the Spybot team for making such a useful program available for free, and will continue to use it for as long as it is available.

Regards