Immunizations

[crackhammer]

Lately, I have been noticing that Spybot S&D is getting slower and slower so I stopped using it a while ago. I reinstalled last week and was trying to immunize the system, with administrator privilege but was unsuccessful. I even launched Spybot with 'Run as administrator', still the same..



Can anyone advise what is going on and how to fix it?

Thanks in advance.

[Zenobia]

At the time you took your screenshot,the immunize screen indicates that immunize did not have admin privileges.Is this the screen you saw after rightclicking Spybot and selecting Run As Administrator,or did you take the screenshot at a later date just to show what was not immunized?

I see Firefox isn't immunized.What happens after you click Apply Immunization?Does immunization freeze on Firefox,or anything like that?
Also,what operating system do you have?

[crackhammer]

Honestly, I don't remember when I took screenshots. Here are new ones and I am very sure that I ran it under admin privilege. I ran 'apply immunization twice, just to make sure but screen remains the same.

[Zenobia]

Yup,that immunization window has admin privileges.Thank you very much for posting the screenshots.
Do you get any errors after clicking apply immunization?Does the immunization window show as Not Responding or anything like that?Or does the immunization window just stay as is,with no visible reaction?

Could you go back into immunization where you were when you took your screenshots and click Apply immunization again?
After you click Apply Immunization,does the Apply Immunization window become unclickable,and do you see "Immunizing your system now....." over to the right of the Apply Immunization button?

[Cloudcatcher]

There was a post in the faq at the Spybot main page that said the following (shown here in bold/italic) that was supposed to be a fix for the immunization issue in which Spybot only immunizes one of the users in Firefox. I have solved the problem and I found that the information from the faq is not correct. It is the opposite of what needs to happen. Here is the initial info from the faq that I tried:

WRONG:
"There is a trick though how you can enforce it to be identified as a Firefox 2 profile. Go to C:\Documents and Users\Username\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\something.default, which is your profile folder (path might be slightly different depending on the OS).

If there is no file named hostperm.1 but one named permissions.sqlite with a filesize of 0 bytes, rename the latter hostperm.1.
If both files exist, delete the file permissions.sqlite.
If only pemissions.sqlite exists and is larger than 0 bytes, delete it and create an empty file named hostperm.1 "

You can do a search with those exact words and find it in the faq solutions. The information above is the opposite of what needs to be done. Here is how to fix the immunization issue:

THIS WORKED FOR ME:
From your administrator account, go into C:\Documents and Users\Username\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\something.default. Find the files that are mentioned. In my administrator account, I had the permissions.sqlite with 1.4 mbs. I do think this may be the active host file, but I could be mistaken. Prior to the fix, the admiinstrator account immunized normally, but the user file did not. So, I followed the directions from the faq and neither my administrator nor user accounts were immunized in Firefox 25. So, I put the permissions.sqlite file that I had deleted and restored it from the recycle bin and replaced the -0- byte file that the above faq said to create. Then, I made a copy of the large permissions.sqlite file and copied it into the profile folder where the zero byte file resided for my user account.

Once the 1.4 mb permissions.squlite file resided in BOTH the administrator and user accounts, Spybot immunized Firefox 25 normally again. So, as I said, the directions in the faq are the exact opposite of what needs to happen. All users should have the large permissions.sqlite file residing in the profile folder and your problem is solved. If you need to create a hostperm.1 file in either account, you just name a notepad file with that name, ignoring the instructions to avoid changing the ending. hostperm.1 is the correct filename.

[Cloudcatcher]

I cleaned my computer with CCleaner after fixing Spybot and tried Spybot again and this time, the Administrator was not immunizing. I copied the permissions.sqlite file back from the user profile which was now 1.78 mb into the administrator file and it immunized correctly again. I also told Ccleaner to stop cleaning "unused file extensions" in the registry cleaner tool. So far, so good. Spybot is immunizing correctly again. I have Spybot 1.6.2.46. I don't know if bugs are being fixed in the free version. I periodically donate and I'm sure many other people do to, so I hope bugs are still being fixed.

[Cloudcatcher]

It seems that Ccleaner was taking my permissions.sqlite file out (every time it ran) from the Administrator profile for Mozilla even after telling it to stop removing unused file types and a few other things. Previously, permissions.sqlite was being removed from the user file. In Options in Ccleaner, I did an exclude from cleaning for C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator.(my computer name)\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\something.default\permissions.sqlite.

Hopefully, this will hold. I can always also do an exclude for the user profile as well. The permissions.sqlite file always has to be in both Administrator and User files, apparently. Some cleaning programs may not like that for some reason and Spybot may not update Administrator and users either. You may have to do it manuallly.