About using SpyBot's new contextual menu item

[Up & Running]

After upgrading SpyBot to 1.6.2, I noticed the new 'Scan using SpyBot-Search&Destroy' contextual menu item and, as a technician, I rejoiced!

I work on computers, every day, that are badly infected. Usually, I can install SpyBot and run it and its track record has been very impressive. Occasionally, though, I am presented with a machine so badly infected that it cannot boot properly or, if it does boot, it won't run well enough to be able to install and run SpyBot (or the other utilities I use in situations like this).

So one of the best uses I can see for this new feature is to let me remove a badly infected hard drive from its computer, install it as a slave drive in a working shop computer and then scan it for infections using SpyBot to clean it up enough to be able to boot.

I tried this last night and it seems to work, but it is excruciatingly slow; in the last 8 hours, it has scanned about 10% of the drive's files.

I realize that scanning an entire drive is not what this tool was intended for; spyware likes to live in certain places on the drive. I'd like to know what areas of a hard drive I should be scanning to optimize the chances of removing debilitating infections while minimizing the amount of time the tool needs to work.

What would you advise in this situation? Is there some sort of guide or tutorial on using this excellent new feature?

Is there some other way to run SpyBot on a machine that won't boot or run well enough to install the program?

Thanks so much for an excellent utility!

[drragostea]

I'd like to know what areas of a hard drive I should be scanning...

Then the possibilities of knowing where to scan would be vague. Malware can hide anywhere on the drive, so that minimizes your chances of sucessfully pinpointing a exact place.

I wouldn't suggest you scan with Spybot's Explorer scanner because when it was built it was meant (just as you said) for single files not optimized for whole drives. As an alternative you can use other anti-spyware tools to scan the whole drive, because Spybot will get through the scan but the drawback is that it'll take a long time. Very long.

[notuo]

Hi all.

I came here to ask the same question. If I use the whole SSD interface to scan the whole machine is fine, but if I downloaded something and try to scan only that directory (for instance) the result is the process is very very slow.

So

1) Is there a way to speed this?
2) Is there a way to define what kind of files should be scanned in the context menu?
3) Somebody can explain the difference between this directory scan ad the whole scan? Why the first is too slow?

Thanks in advance to anyone.

[drragostea]

I wouldn't suggest you scan with Spybot's Explorer scanner because when it was built it was meant (just as you said) for single files not optimized for whole drives. As an alternative you can use other anti-spyware tools to scan the whole drive, because Spybot will get through the scan but the drawback is that it'll take a long time. Very long.

Scanning large files will take a long time (assuming you use the Windows Explorer scanner).
2. Are you looking for a filter? I don't think there is an option.