Spybot S&D updating

D

Donald Thomson

New member
On the new main screen it says "No update attempt registered" even after several scheduled updates. When you check the scheduling, you can see a date for the last update that may or may not have happened. A manual update just freezes. There are never any new immunizations. Has the new Spybot S&D ever updated successfully for anybody?
 
Donald Thomson

My problems got worse and I had to run WinSockFix to access any website. Now I have to check what I've messed up while trying various alterations that seemed good ideas at the time. I suppose it'll be next Thursday, 18th August, before there will be updates and I can find out if there really was a problem with Spybot S&D. I have no idea how my registry was corrupted.I did uninstall the old version of Spybot S&D but I also uninstalled several old programs I never use.
 
Donald Thomson

Everything seems correct when updating now except that the number of immunizations does not increase and all of the essential updates are marked as n/a for the beta.
 
The manual updater

Still no increase in immunizations with the automatic or manual updater. I am still not convinced that the updater works at all.
 
The manual updater works on 2.03, but not automatic as far as I can tell

Don T, If you look at all the dates, you can see a couple of new updates each week 8/10, 8/17, 8/24. Do not remember checking immunizations data though.
Donald Thomson said:
Still no increase in immunizations with the automatic or manual updater. I am still not convinced that the updater works at all.
Click to expand...
Automatic does not seem to work as the only time I saw the new dates was after a manual! Which OS & version of S&D 2.0.# beta are you running?
Would you please explain more (or PM me) about the problems & WinSockFix? See my post about Logon Failure after I installed 2.0.5 beta
 
Updating? the beta

Uninstalled the beta, reinstalled and immunized. Patterns dropped from 182,170 to 173,335 and Firefox immunizations from 193, 3*15042 to 193, 3*14961. Automatic update followed by manual update and immunization. No change to pattern number but Firefox immunizations returned to 193, 3*15042, which they have been for weeks.

The packages (except PosOS.sbs) match on Installed and Online date, whatever that means since the dates aren't recent. None match the Released date.

PosOS.sbs has an installed date of 7/28/11 and online date of 1/21/2009.

When I did the first few manual updates today, some packages were flagged red. When I got into the manual update again, the red flagging had disappeared and did not return when a manual update was tried again.

I don't know what all this means but it doesn't look good.

My corrupted registry earlier probably had nothing to do with Spybot S&D. Of course, I ran a thorough scan and a boot scan with Avast but found nothing. Same with Spybot S&D.
 
Updating? the beta

I should have said at the beginning that I was using XP. I put in a bug report and they said it's a Beta and you aren't supposed to use it as if it was a proper release. Told me to go back to 1.6.2.

I've always regarded Beta releases as normal use releases that will have bugs that brave or foolish users should report. A change of terminology? Anyway I'm going back to 1.6.2.
 
Donald Thomson said:
< SNIP >

I've always regarded Beta releases as normal use releases that will have bugs that brave or foolish users should report. A change of terminology? Anyway I'm going back to 1.6.2.
Click to expand...

The Beta terminology has been distorted by much larger organizations wishing to drive interest in their newest releases. Since they have much larger resources, they typically perform both thier Alpha and Beta phases in the background with increasingly larger test groups of 'trusted' users they've developed over time. By the time these products reach the final Public Release phase virtually all the true 'bug's have been discovered and removed, with the final Beta really closer to the Release Candidate phase with only polish and rare minimal bugs that affect small pockets of users. Since the larger organizations recognized the public interest driven by 'new' releases, they've also learned to take advantage of this buzz and so purposefully release these products as 'beta', driving huge amounts of public interest and installations.

Spybot S&D Betas have always been much more real, with significant bugs and even many product interface questions needing user input. This simply reflects the smaller organization that they are and thus the closer relationship between the developer and you the user. This also implies that the potential for danger to your system, which all products claim you need to assume during a Beta, might be higher.

With a malware removal type of security product, the potential for system damage is always high, so the danger is even more real. Thus you should always use only the release versions of the product unless instructed otherwise by that organizations own support. In other words, "Beta does not mean better".

Bitman
 
bitman said:
With a malware removal type of security product, the potential for system damage is always high, so the danger is even more real. Thus you should always use only the release versions of the product unless instructed otherwise by that organizations own support. In other words, "Beta does not mean better".
Click to expand...

But we have been asked to use the beta version - see http://forums.spybot.info/showthread.php?t=63537&referrerid=48204 which says:

daemon said:
Please help with beta-testing so Spybot-S&D 2.0 final will be rock stable.
Click to expand...

For someone on the Spybot Advisor Team bitman, you seem to be way off message.
 
drghughes,

Note the last post by Donald Thomson just prior to mine, you'll discover that he was told by Spybot Support to return to Spybot 1.6.2 based on his Bug Report. I was simply trying to explain to him why they instructed him this way and why you don't use a beta on a system that already has issues, malware or otherwise.

You misunderstand the request by daemon, since they simply want those willing to risk their systems to test the new beta not everyone who uses it, since most users aren't technical enough or can't take this risk with their only operational system.

I've seen too many neophites destroy their PC with a beta and then go off bad-mouthing the product (not just Spybot by the way) because they didn't understand the risks. Blindly using a beta program just because someone asks isn't a good policy for anyone, especially those not technically inclined.

Bitman
 
bitman said:
Note the last post by Donald Thomson just prior to mine, you'll discover that he was told by Spybot Support to return to Spybot 1.6.2 based on his Bug Report. I was simply trying to explain to him why they instructed him this way and why you don't use a beta on a system that already has issues, malware or otherwise.
Click to expand...

Unless there's something that hasn't been reported here, that advice just doesn't make sense. A user reports a bug in a beta programme and is told to uninstall the beta and use the stable version. Why would you do that?

Maybe my view is coloured by the fact that I've been reporting the problems with updating since v2.0.3-beta1, i.e. 3 bug reports, and the response that I've got from Spybot seems to be along the lines of "what bug?"

I'm fast getting the impression that Spybot doesn't believe that this bug exists and isn't ever going to do anything to fix it. Your comments appear to be consistent with this. I'm starting to wonder what I'm doing here.

I wonder whether I'll be told to uninstall the beta if I still have problems with v2.0.6-beta4?
 
drghughes,

First, the OP who began this thread is clearly having basic stability issues with his system, whether these are due to malware or simply some other operating system issues, so this is why he was instructed to return to the current release version of Spybot S&D. Trying to trouble-shoot the existing malware and operating system issues is quite enough by itself, this doesn't need to be confused with known or unidentified bugs in a beta version.

Second, I have absolutely nothing to do with development or fixing bugs, so my comments have nothing to do with that and never stated anything of the sort, so if you're looking for something to use as an excuse to stop helping with the beta that's your own decision, not one that I or anyone else here is involved in.

As for the bug(s) you have been reporting, if the Spybot devlopment and testing team are unable to reproduce the bug or consider it a known limitation of the product, this is exactly the response I would expect. The difficulty I'm having getting you to understand the reasons for our responses to the OP in this thread indicate to me that you have difficulty communicating via writing, so I'm guessing you may be missing something within the response to your bug report that explains their reasoning. In any case, this thread is not the appropriate place for this discussion of your own issues since it only confuses the separate response to Donald Thomson, which is a clear issue of mis-application of the beta.

If you already have a thread here discussing your issue, then reference that and exit this thread for that discussion. If not and you wish to understand the answer to your bug report better, then begin a separate thread to do that, since mixing responses to different issues appears to be a large part of your confusion.

Bitman
 
A Touch Defensive?

bitman said:
drghughes,

First, the OP who began this thread is clearly having basic stability issues with his system, whether these are due to malware or simply some other operating system issues, so this is why he was instructed to return to the current release version of Spybot S&D. Trying to trouble-shoot the existing malware and operating system issues is quite enough by itself, this doesn't need to be confused with known or unidentified bugs in a beta version.

Second, I have absolutely nothing to do with development or fixing bugs, so my comments have nothing to do with that and never stated anything of the sort, so if you're looking for something to use as an excuse to stop helping with the beta that's your own decision, not one that I or anyone else here is involved in.

As for the bug(s) you have been reporting, if the Spybot devlopment and testing team are unable to reproduce the bug or consider it a known limitation of the product, this is exactly the response I would expect. The difficulty I'm having getting you to understand the reasons for our responses to the OP in this thread indicate to me that you have difficulty communicating via writing, so I'm guessing you may be missing something within the response to your bug report that explains their reasoning. In any case, this thread is not the appropriate place for this discussion of your own issues since it only confuses the separate response to Donald Thomson, which is a clear issue of mis-application of the beta.

If you already have a thread here discussing your issue, then reference that and exit this thread for that discussion. If not and you wish to understand the answer to your bug report better, then begin a separate thread to do that, since mixing responses to different issues appears to be a large part of your confusion.

Bitman
Click to expand...

It seems as though one of the worst strategies of companies is to *blame the messenger,* with comments that seems to cuff this person off a touch.

I've certainly found Spybot Beta 2 to be a completely different & confused product, real bloatware.
 
firefox007,

Just like drghughes you apparently can't read, since this entire thread really has nothing to do with Spybot S&D 2.0 itself, it's about the misuse of the beta version by someone who should never have been using it in the first place.

And as for being defensive, I have no need, since I have nothing to do with Spybot S&D itself and am simply a forum helper from long ago. I haven't personally installed anything newer than the last 1.x version, since I moved on to Microsoft's MSE on all my newer Windows operating systems and simply see no need for any additional protection for these. I keep in touch here more for history's sake and very rarely respond to posts like those from such confused users as the one who began this thread.

You on the other hand appear to be spending your time attacking what is clearly an early beta version of a product for being just that! If you've got nothing better to do than that then why not simply move on.

Bitman
 
firefox007 said:
It seems as though one of the worst strategies of companies is to *blame the messenger,* with comments that seems to cuff this person off a touch.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the support firefox007. However, when Bitman told me, the first person to respond to Donald Thomson, to "exit this thread" as though I'd just entered it, I figured that it was best to just ignore this and concentrate on other things.
 
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