I've long had problems with completing Spybot updates. The command doesn't hang. Rather, it runs quite quickly, but the vertical bar turns red, one or two of the lines flying by reports an error, and at the end it says it failed. I've found that rebooting and then turning off (temporarily) the McAfee Antivirus firewall does the trick, and things go fine.

Is there a way to avoid that step? I went into the firewall's settings for "internet connections for programs." It already listed Scanner Service (sdfssvc) and Tray Access (sdtray). I added Background Update Service (sdupdsvc) and Update (sdupdate). That didn't require typing anything. Rather, it just asked me to browse, locate the exe and click. Easy. But so far, that doesn't seem to do the job. I realize this is not a major inconvenience! Thanks.