Really ANGRY with Spybot S&D

[James UK]

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

[Amethyst]

Sorry to hijack a thread like this, but you've raised a question for me in my mind anyway...Can you just go into a hosts file and delete a bunch of stuff? I've never done anything like that. My hosts file is now 245kb, which I understand is would be considered 'huge'.

I had been experiencing some browsing slowdowns, but I found out last week that it was my ISP. Some of it was from Telesat throttling my speed due to them figuring I was using too much bandwidth, and some of it was for no reason at all. (Maybe too many customers on a satellite beam, which would also cause the speed throttling. BTW, we have some serious and controversial 'traffic shaping' issues with ISP's here in Canada.) When they changed my satellite carrier from one to another, the browsing and overall internet speed perked right up. Before that, I was experiencing page loading times similar to what I had on a dialup connection and I had actually noticed it becoming a serious problem particularly the second week in June. I see I turned on the immunizer May 29 and then updated it June 1.

I've never paid attention to such a thing as 'hosts files' or what they do and I never gave it a second of thought until my AVG told me the hosts file had been changed, and then I connected the date and time of that change as having occurred when I first applied Spybot's immunizer. I just opened my hosts file for the first time today, and, yes indeed, it's big and it's full of stuff that Spybot put in there. I don't really mind, as long as things work.

But I just wanted to know, in case any problems do come up, if it's OK to open up a hosts file, using, for example, wordpad, and then editing it. (Yes, I would make a backup first, I am uber-careful!)

[Amethyst]

I just thought of this...If a person wanted to get Spybot's stuff out of their hosts file without actually opening the file up and manually editing it, could they just do the following:

Start Spybot.
Go to "Immunize"
Click on "undo".
Remove the check from the box beside the host file.
Click on 'immunize' again.

[ChrisWar666]

James / Amethyst, it'll depend on your OS whether a large hosts file will affect connection speed. For me (Vista) it does nothing, and just deleting the contents will leave your computer more open to attacks. This may help:
"
As for the hosts file, the one problem I know about is Windows 2000 and it's DNS Client Service. If that system service is enabled, it indeed very annoyingly slows down the system.
"
If you search the SB forums some more, you'll find some information that will let you have the Spybot hosts protection & fast speeds - Chris

[Zenobia]

I just thought of this...If a person wanted to get Spybot's stuff out of their hosts file without actually opening the file up and manually editing it, could they just do the following:

Start Spybot.
Go to "Immunize"
Click on "undo".
Remove the check from the box beside the host file.
Click on 'immunize' again.

Yes,Spybot's hosts file entries could be removed that way.Or,if you didn't want to unimmunize everything first,with Spybot 1.5.2 you could start Spybot,go to "Immunize",if everything in the window to the right is checkmarked,then rightclick in the window and select Deselect All,then checkmark Global(Hosts) and click Undo.

If you search the SB forums some more, you'll find some information that will let you have the Spybot hosts protection & fast speeds

Yup,there's also an entry in the FAQ section here:
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/faq/12.html
Or,this page has directions for setting DNS client to disabled or manual,if a person needed too:
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm#Note

[drragostea]

If you search the SB forums some more, you'll find some information that will let you have the Spybot hosts protection & fast speeds - Chris

Just wanted to crash the party Chris. ;0, just joking.

Giving some examples would be great... if the "hypothesis" of the HOSTS file slowdown was true. I can't seem to find any info (or I'm not looking enough) on having Spybot HOSTS protection and fast speeds.

[James UK]

Amethyst -"Can you just go into a hosts file and delete a bunch of stuff? I've never done anything like that. My hosts file is now 245kb, which I understand is would be considered 'huge'. "

Yes, you can just open the "HOSTS" file (note there's no three letter file suffix, like ".txt" on the end) in a plain text editor like notepad. Each entry really just tells Windows what "number" to use when you type in a particular website "name" or address.

Very good info. on the HOSTS file here; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_file#Blocking especially the "blocking" and "redirecting" parts.

Why not save a backup of your HOSTS file, and replace the original with the example I posted above? If it helps, then you know that was the issue, if not, just replace it with your backup again.

Thanks to ChrisWar666 and all others for the replies. Appreciated.

HTH

[drragostea]

Yes, you can just open the "HOSTS" file (note there's no three letter file suffix, like ".txt" on the end) in a plain text editor like notepad. Each entry really just tells Windows what "number" to use when you type in a particular website "name" or address.

Very good info. on the HOSTS file here; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_file#Blocking especially the "blocking" and "redirecting" parts.

Why not save a backup of your HOSTS file, and replace the original with the example I posted above? If it helps, then you know that was the issue, if not, just replace it with your backup again.

I don't really mean to suggest a solution but a backup will do. I use SpywareBlaster (4.1) with a encrypted backup of my HOSTS file. Just in case.

Simple, to add a "unwanted" site... Immunize in Spybot. The feature does it all.

I've never attempted to undo my Immunization and redo it to test the speeds, because I'm using FF3 and undoing the immunization... takes forever. Trust me. Spybot Team Member PepiMk, said that Spybot recognizes Firefox because one folder or another uses the same code from FF2.

However, immunization takes some time too. But it's all right.

Some users had problems in the past regarding Spybot blocking the BAIDU website, though.