I'm using Spybot 2.4.40 on Win7 Pro SP1 on a box with 8GB RAM. VSMON has a memory leak that is eating up RAM. Currently, I'm at 1,308,772K and climbing by about 4K-100K/minute. VSMON is also pegging my usage meeting, taking as much as 50%.

I tried:
  • Exiting SpyBot--vsmon is still running.
  • Stopping the vsmon service in the Task Manager--was told requested control is not valid (yeah, and FU, too--*I* own this computer, pay attention to me!).
  • Disabling the service from starting up in the Services window of the Task Manager--access denied, again (and FU in your ear for the same reason!!).
  • Rebooting. Nope, can't get VSMON to go away/disable/mind its own freakin' business.
  • Uninstalling and reinstalling Spybot. Ditto.


This is unacceptable. I've tried everything I can think of to effect some kind of change.

What I'd like is to be able to run Spybot (which I normally like and have recommended in 8 or 9 of my books because it's such a cool product) without having VSMON try to take over the world while I'm doing it. Turning it off until I actually need it would be fine--don't know how, though, and it's remarkably resistant to my suggestions. If I can't get VSMON to play nicely with everything else, SpyBot is going away forever. With some regret, but if it doesn't work, it doesn't work.

Any suggestions, please? TIA.

Yours truly,

John Hedtke
Consultant/Author

P.S. In the time it took me to write this post, about 15 minutes, the memory leak has crept up by 1Mb and is now 1,309,732. ~sigh~