Immunization of Hosts file in conflict with Anti-Virus

[Nutster]

I started getting a message from my anti-virus (ZoneAlarm Free) saying that there was a problem with the Hosts file, which gets immunized on an irregular basis by SpyBot S&D and nothing else should be touching it. This is a problem (false positive) with ZoneAlarm that I will be reporting to CheckPoint.

I updated the SpyBot S&D info and then ran the Immunize function. SpyBot reported that it could not finish the immunization because an antivirus program (such as AVG Free or ZoneAlarm) wouldn't let it update the Hosts file. And ZoneAlarm then reported a detected virus in the Hosts file. This is all as it should be, well from the SpyBot side of things; ZoneAlarm was being a pain.

Your dialog stated that more information on this could be found in the help file, so I pushed the Help button and proceeded to read what I thought were the relevant parts of the Help system: Scanning your system -Immunize, Tools - Hosts file, and the FAQ. None of these areas addressed this problem or how to get around it. None of these sections even mentioned that this problem could occur.

I then went into ZoneAlarm and added an exception (Anti-Virus - Settings - Exceptions) for the hosts file. As this is not an executable file, I am not as worried about somebody else coming and clobbering it, as that is one of the things that TeaTimer is monitoring, right? I then told SpyBot S&D to immunize again and it was successful in immunizing the Hosts file and ZoneAlarm did not complain.

All that said, I have two concerns. 1) Is this the best approach to deal with this issue (anti-virus exception + re-immunize)? 2) I would like to recommend that the help file be updated to show how to deal with this problem. Perhaps a FAQ entry about how to solve this problem and then a reference to the FAQ in the Hosts file entry.

[bbnetwork]

Hello

If you are using a Anti-Virus-/Anti-Maleware-Software or Firewall from another Company, which protect the hostfile, this error is possible.
You can disable the hostfile-protection into this Software, if you like to use Immunusation of Spybot, you can temporary turn off this Software or you can create an exclusition for Spybot into it.

So i think, if your Firewall or AV offer an exclusition for Spybot, this will be the best solution.


The reason why it maybe not mentioned in help could be there are many different AV on market and not all of them monitore the hostfile.
But i thought i had read something about it in FAQ