Spybot Hang at load

G

GooglyBoogly

New member
I have recently installed Spybot s&D v1.6

The teaTimerworks fine, but then I attempt to explicitly load SpybotSD.exe
it shows "Locating temporary files folders" and just hangs (or stays there indefinately). I have tried uninstalling and renistalling with no luck

Any suggestions?
 
is your temp file very large?

If so, run disk cleanup. Make sure temp files is checked, (not temp internet files) and clean up the disk. Disk cleanup is found under:

My computer-c-right click-properties, disk cleanup.

After clearing your temp files, try to run spybot again. If unable to do so, completely remove spybot by following the directions found here in this link:

http://www.spybot.info/en/howto/uninstall.html

(Use internet explorer when browsing to the link)

Also, please state what operating system you are running.

Thanks, let us know how it goes :)
 
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I tried running the cleanup as you suggested, but there were almost no files in the temp files option (only 300kb or so).

Got rid of them anyway and did a complete uninstall as per the link you posted (went to add/remove and them manually deleted the spybot folder, and ran the registry cleaner dowload)

Then I reinstalled, but the same problem remains. The teatimer works fine, but any attempt to run SpybotSD.exe causes the computer to get stuck at the "Locating temporary files folders" option, and sits there at near 100% CPU usage until I do a forced shutdown of the app.

Something else is wrong. Perhaps the download became corrupted for just the s+d compinent of spybot? Or can I manually edit a file to tell spybot explicitly where to look for those temporary files folders somehow

I am running WinXP sp3 on a Pentuim 4
 
GooglyBoogly,

What drive (drive letter) is your operating system installed on?

What drive did you install Spybot on?

Did you have an older version of Spybot prior to installing version 1.6 and if so did you install the newer version over the top of the old one, or did you uninstall the old version first?

What browsers are installed on your PC?
 
hmmm...

GooglyBoogly said:
I tried running the cleanup as you suggested, but there were almost no files in the temp files option (only 300kb or so).

Got rid of them anyway and did a complete uninstall as per the link you posted (went to add/remove and them manually deleted the spybot folder, and ran the registry cleaner dowload)

Then I reinstalled, but the same problem remains. The teatimer works fine, but any attempt to run SpybotSD.exe causes the computer to get stuck at the "Locating temporary files folders" option, and sits there at near 100% CPU usage until I do a forced shutdown of the app.

Something else is wrong. Perhaps the download became corrupted for just the s+d compinent of spybot? Or can I manually edit a file to tell spybot explicitly where to look for those temporary files folders somehow

I am running WinXP sp3 on a Pentuim 4
Click to expand...

hmm...interesting. Answer greyfox's questions please when you can. The only thing i can suggest is to force spybot to not look at/clean up temporary files on startup of the spybot program.

See this link: http://forums.spybot.info/showthread.php?t=32523
 
I followed the instructions given in your link, but there was no tweaks subfolder under Safer Networking Limited, and thus I would not make the change requested. I have attached an image the registry path to prove this (zipped because your site does not allow for .jpg uploads)

In regards to greyfox's questions.

Win XP is installed to C:
Spybot was installed to the standard path on C:
I used to have an earleir version of spybot installed, but the computer has since been rebuilt with a fresh OS install, (without the older version of spybot). I have installed AVG (but manually closed it down when running the spybot installer)
By browser I assume you mean internet browser, and that would be IE 7
 
GooglyBoogly,

You would have to add the tweaks key as well - see attached screen shot.
I am not sure this will help - it is intended to prevent the files being deleted, but I'm not sure whether it negates Spybot from locating them (or trying to in your case). I will see if I can test this later today. For the moment it is probably worth trying.

Please note you should backup your registry before making any changes, as mistakes made playing with the registry can easily result in a loss of data and you having to reinstall your operating system. This is the customary "all care and no responsibility warning".
 
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Success!

:yahoo:
I copied the changes as shown by Greyfox, restarted and now spybot works!

Thank you.

P.S How were you able to attach a .jpg? When I tried to do it I was told that that file extension was not allowed (even when renamed)
 
Spoke too soon

:sad:

Looks like I spoke too soon, while Spybot did load fine, I immediately patched it (using the update function) and attempted to run a "Check for problems", however spybot would only display "Unknown" in the description bar, and even once I pressed the cancel scan button spybot continued to keep CPU usage at around 100%

However the ummunise function seems to be working jsut fine

I have attached another zip showing a screenshot of the unknown issue
 
GooglyBoogly,

The easy one first - attachment files bmp, doc, gif, pdf, png, psd and txt are limited to 19.5KB - Zip files can go to 97.7KB. If your source file is for instance a bmp, and it's less that 19.5KB, it gets converted to jpg by the forum upload process.

The "unknown" in the task bar appears briefly at the start of the scan, and it would appear in your case the scan has not progressed beyond this point. I believe that the temporary files are looked at right at the start of the scan, so I think you are just seeing more of the original problem.

Can you put Spybot in Advanced mode - From the main screen click on Mode, then Advanced then answer Yes. Then goto Tools then View Report. There are a number of items with tick boxes shown - by default all except the bottom box in each column is ticked. Please add a tick to "include list of services in report", then click on the green arrow "View Report" at the top of the screen. At the top of the next screen click on "Export" and save the file to somewhere you can find it again. It is a text file and because it will be larger that the 19.5KB allowed, please zip it up and attach to a return post here.

Next, using Windows Explorer, goto C:\Windows\Temp. If that folder has sub folders click on the + to the left of the Temp folder then highlight the Temp folder so its contents are shown in the right panel of the screen. Can you post a screen shot taken at that point.

Again using Windows Explorer, goto C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Temp. If that folder has sub folders click on the + to the left of the Temp folder then highlight the Temp folder so its contents are shown in the right panel of the screen. Can you post a screen shot taken at that point.

Finally, at least for the moment, start Spybot. Goto Settings->File sets. Right click in the white area of the screen and select Minimal Spyware Check. Then manually remove the ticks from all of the items on the screen that you can - this should leave only 1 tick at the top of the page you can't remove (That's the first item "Integrates search for spybots"). Now try to carry out a scan. Note the time from the task bar that you start the attempt. Let's know if it still hangs - I think it probably will, but if it doesn't don't attempt to fix anything it may find. Either way, once the scan has finished or you have manually crashed out of it, go back into Spybot, goto Tools->View Report. Click on view previous report. Look for a file named checks.yymmdd-hhmm.log that closely matches the time you tried to start this particular scan. If there isn't one let us know, if there is open it, export a copy to somewhere you can find it, zip it up and attach it to your post.

That's enough for now - hopefully all this will show something significant.
 
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green arrow "View Report" at the top of the screen. At the top of the next screen click on "Export"
Click to expand...
Spybot freezes when I click view report - it doesn't get to export.

However, if i do not check "Include list of services" it does work. That exported file is now attached as Report2


Next, using Windows Explorer... export a copy to somewhere
Click to expand...
see attachment for both temp folders and the report
 
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GooglyBoogly,

I haven't yet had a chance to look at the information you provided in detail, however there are a few things that did stand out.

First, you said earlier that you had cleaned out all your temporary files, well the two screen shots show a very different picture. There should have been virtually no sub files or folders in or under the two temp folders concerned once the clean had been done, but they are still full of ????.

As no permanent files should be in either place, please try to delete everything in these temporary folders manually. It may be that you will be told you can't as they are in use, in which case you either need to determine what is using them, and why they are where they are, or boot into safe mode and then try to delete them. As your problem centres around temporary files, they have to go - if you are concerned about this, back up the temp files to a CD first.

Next, Report2 under System information shows Windows 95 (Build:950) (4.0.950), however this is supposed to be an XP SP3 installation which you said you rebuilt with a fresh operating system install. A fresh XP install should not have carried this reference to W95.

There are also references to early MS updates (prior to SP3) that again I would not have expected to be there after a fresh rebuild?. Normally a fresh install would be from either an XP-SP1 or XP-SP2 CD, followed by SP3 install, then MS updates for SP3. What is the history of this computer?

Report 1 is a checks.yymmdd-hhmm.log file. It indicates the the scan did not progress far at all. A significant point though in the report is that in line 2 it gives the version as 1.5 - It should say 1.6.0. The version numbers of the Spybot modules in Report2 as far as I can see do match with 1.6.0.30, but the version in checks is wrong and that leaves some doubt about what you actually have installed. I would suggest you download a new version altogether from one of the sites at http://www.spybot.info/en/mirrors/index.html.

Before installing it completely uninstall the existing version, then manually delete the folders C:\Program files\Spybot - Search & Destroy, and C:\Documents and Settings\All users\Application Data\Spybot - Search & Destroy, and clean up with the "This small Fix" that you used before.

I would also suggest you don't activate either Teatimer or SDHelper at this stage during the new install.

As soon as time permits I will look further at the information you posted, but in the meantime can you try what I have suggested above.
 
GooglyBoogly,

I am a fraction concerned that I have not been able to positively idenfy some of the files/folders that appear in your Temporary files, so if you are unable to delete them, and you still can't carry out a full scan with Spybot, or if the scan does find malware, you might want to consider posting in the Malware removal forum, and waiting until a malware expert can assist you.

Before you do, please read this
http://forums.spybot.info/showthread.php?t=288
 
Greyfox said:
GooglyBoogly,
First, you said earlier that you had cleaned out all your temporary files, well the two screen shots show a very different picture. There should have been virtually no sub files or folders in or under the two temp folders concerned once the clean had been done, but they are still full of ????.
Click to expand...

I never said that I cleaned out all my temporary files - only that I had used the 'disk cleanup' option on the temporary files (that is where I got the 300kb from), at no stage was I asked to manually empty those folders, so I hadn't done so. Also, the disk cleanup was done two days before I took those screenshots I posted and as such I expected there to be some temporary files generated since then(I am not the only user of the PC)

Greyfox said:
As no permanent files should be in either place, please try to delete everything in these temporary folders manually. It may be that you will be told you can't as they are in use, in which case you either need to determine what is using them, and why they are where they are, or boot into safe mode and then try to delete them. As your problem centres around temporary files, they have to go - if you are concerned about this, back up the temp files to a CD first.
Click to expand...

I was able to delete (crtl +del) everything within both the temp folders manually without any warnings or errors of them being in use


Greyfox said:
Next, Report2 under System information shows Windows 95 (Build:950) (4.0.950), however this is supposed to be an XP SP3 installation which you said you rebuilt with a fresh operating system install. A fresh XP install should not have carried this reference to W95.

There are also references to early MS updates (prior to SP3) that again I would not have expected to be there after a fresh rebuild?. Normally a fresh install would be from either an XP-SP1 or XP-SP2 CD, followed by SP3 install, then MS updates for SP3. What is the history of this computer?
Click to expand...

I believe the comp was origionally a win98 machine which was incrementally updated to Sp3. However about a year ago the hard drive began to fail (for reasons unknown). We took it to a computer store who was able to recover (most) of the data frmo the disk. We then proceeded to puchase a new hard drive and the store reinstalled WinXP using the registration key(s)? we provided (I do not recall the specifics, but they most certainly did not ask for our win98CD). This is why I thought there would be no traces of anything earlier, and said it was a fresh rebuild from XP


Greyfox said:
Report 1 is a checks.yymmdd-hhmm.log file. It indicates the the scan did not progress far at all. A significant point though in the report is that in line 2 it gives the version as 1.5 - It should say 1.6.0. The version numbers of the Spybot modules in Report2 as far as I can see do match with 1.6.0.30, but the version in checks is wrong and that leaves some doubt about what you actually have installed. I would suggest you download a new version altogether from one of the sites at http://www.spybot.info/en/mirrors/index.html.

Before installing it completely uninstall the existing version, then manually delete the folders C:\Program files\Spybot - Search & Destroy, and C:\Documents and Settings\All users\Application Data\Spybot - Search & Destroy, and clean up with the "This small Fix" that you used before.
Click to expand...

I have downloaded a fresh version form one of the mirrors from the site you have linked. Then I closed down the Teatimer and did a full uninstall as discussed earlier in the thread (including the registry fix)


Greyfox said:
I would also suggest you don't activate either Teatimer or SDHelper at this stage during the new install.
Click to expand...

Then I reinstalled (choosing not to active teatimer, nor the IE plugin) using the newly downloaded file and It loaded up fine, then I updated spybot and was asked to reboot, which I did.

Next I attempted to 'check for problems' but it got stuck at 'unknown again.

Should I post another instance of the report (if I can get it to run), along with screenies of the (recently emptied) temp folders?
As soon as time permits I will look further at the information you posted, but in the meantime can you try what I have suggested above.
 
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More Info:

I have just loaded Spybot after a reboot (still no teatimer), and immediately closed it again. I got 4 different errors, which I have attached pics of as d6-9 (in chronological order)

Just to make sure it wasn't a one-off I rebooted and tried this again and still got some error messages
 
GooglyBoogly,

The error messages might mean something to one of the Spybot programmers, but unfortunately they don't mean much to me.

I have basically run out of ideas - You did say in one of your last two posts that you are not the only one using this computer. Does that mean there are multiple user accounts set up, and if so it raises two questions. Have the temporary files associated with the other user accounts also been cleaned out, and is your account (the one under which Spybot was installed and is being run) an administrator account.

Have you run a full antivirus scan of the computer recently, and if so did it find anything?

My only other suggestion would be to try to run a scan using some other spyware products like the free version of Malwarebytes and the free version of Superantispyware and see whether (a) they can complete a scan and (b) whether they find anything.

If anyone else following this thread has any ideas please feel free to chip in.
 
While there are multiple users, there is only one logon and its an administrator acount, so no luck there. I will look into the other software you suggested.
 
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