Spysweeper or Spyware Doctor

[Gigabyte]

Hey guys,
I currently have Spysweeper as a licensed program,but it expires in 30 days. I tried Spyware Doctor and it found 106 things that Spysweeper didn't.:o Has anyone gone from Spysweeper to Spyware Doctor? and how do you like it compared to Spysweeper.Thanks

[Gigabyte]

I do wonder however since I used a trial version and it tells me these things are present then informs me that I need to buy it to remove them.???

[Gigabyte]

I have decided to stick with Spysweeper. It has more features . Anyway,to keep from making another thread, I use Spysweeper and I have spywareblaster,spywareguard,ms defender,spybot installed on my pc.I have Spysweeper and spywareguard running and use spybot,spywareblaster,and ms defender for on demand. Should I stop spywareguard? do I really need all these programs??Thanks

[The Hammer]

{QUOTE-> I have decided to stick with Spysweeper. It has more features . Anyway,to keep from making another thread, I use Spysweeper and I have spywareblaster,spywareguard,ms defender,spybot installed on my pc.I have Spysweeper and spywareguard running and use spybot,spywareblaster,and ms defender for on demand. Should I stop spywareguard? do I really need all these programs??Thanks <-QUOTE}Personally I would keep Spysweeper and SpywareBlaster and ditch the rest you have listed.

[Hard Rocker]

Hi, :)

I've used both .... and in my opinion Spy Sweeper is a more reliable program. Spyware Doctor produced way too many false positives on my PC. :(

HR 8)

[JRCATES]

All software security products have their pros and cons, and since none are perfect, opinions will vary. After all, one man's junk is another one's treasure. One advantage that SpySweeper does have over Spyware Doctor is a dedicated user forum. This makes it much easier to report the FPs that Hard Rocker is talking about. I find Spyware Doctor to be a very effective and improving product, but the lack of a forum presense is a little disheartening. Both products are rated high by various software reviewers and through independent testing, so go with the one you like the best....either will do a good job of helping to protect your PC.

[muf]

Used Spy Sweeper since it was first released. Had problems with early 3.xx version's but from 3.5 onwards it's been excellent. Not surprising i've found virtually no threats in the last 12 months(I use Online Armor and BOClean). It's reassuring that i don't have to contend with FP's every other week! Tried Spyware Doctor about 6 months ago and it produced 11 FP's, of which some of them were Cyberlink application's. E-mailed the author and uninstalled it. Won't give the time of day to something that targets obvious good apps as spyware. On a side note: I trialled Zerospyware and my first scan came up clean. So there's a company showing you that you don't need to produce FP's to snare a customer.

muf

[Gigabyte]

{QUOTE-> Hi, :)

I've used both .... and in my opinion Spy Sweeper is a more reliable program. Spyware Doctor produced way too many false positives on my PC. :(

HR 8) <-QUOTE}
Yeah. I was having a hard time believing Spyware Doctor found 106 things that Spysweeper didn't.;D

[Eldar]

I've been pretty satisfied with Spy Sweeper. :)
Until now it only produced two times a false positive, which I immediately
reported to their support.
It was fixed pretty fast once it was confirmed and that's been about six months ago.

I also had Spyware Doctor installed in the past and although it's a nice app, it produced
too many false positives on my system in those days.
Two days ago I downloaded it again and ran a scan with updated signatures.
It found 64 objects (all false positives), so IMO Spy Sweeper is the best. :D

Spyware Doctor is a good anti-spyware, but most people who know almost nothing about
computers will simply quarantine and eventually delete what it found. :(

I know it happens, but it must be reduced to a minimum to prevent users from deleting keys
necessary for the good functioning of certain programs and/or their PC.

[Gigabyte]

I keep Spysweeper and spywareblaster running at all times and use the others I mentioned as an on demand. In the last 6 months,everytime I scan with Spysweeper,nothing was found.;D The others(spybot,adaware,etc)found a couple of cookies.

[spindoctor]

I would take Spysweeper over SpywareDoctor because of the false positive issues with SD. Not to mention the fact that SD refuses to detect the Sony rootkit and that alone is enough for me to avoid this software. It makes me wonder what other malware they refuse to detect. :dry:

[Gigabyte]

{QUOTE-> I would take Spysweeper over SpywareDoctor because of the false positive issues with SD. Not to mention the fact that SD refuses to detect the Sony rootkit and that alone is enough for me to avoid this software. It makes me wonder what other malware they refuse to detect. :dry: <-QUOTE}
Wasn't aware of that.:o So,using the setup I mentioned should be fine then? Don't want to use more than is necessary?

[spindoctor]

I suppose it depends what you do and where you go online. If you avoid pr0n and other questionable sites, are careful what you download and install and don't open unexpected emails or read them as plain text only, you would be better off and may not even need SS, but it's still nice to have a few scanners for on-demand scans. It certainly can't hurt to use SS and SB, though I tend to run a bit more heavily armored ship myself. ;)

[Gigabyte]

{QUOTE-> I suppose it depends what you do and where you go online. If you avoid pr0n and other questionable sites, are careful what you download and install and don't open unexpected emails or read them as plain text only, you would be better off and may not even need SS, but it's still nice to have a few scanners for on-demand scans. It certainly can't hurt to use SS and SB, though I tend to run a bit more heavily armored ship myself. ;) <-QUOTE}
:P no,the pc isn't used for questionable sites. Can you elaborate on what you use. Awhile back I was told that running more antispyware programs at once,does more harm than good?

[LIW]

Hi,

I actually did the opposite of what you guys did. I uninstalled my SpySweeper for Spyware Doctor coz SpySweeper slows down my comp a little compare to Spyware Doctor. I am sad to know that Spyware Doctor produces lots of FP but weirdly, my Spyware Doctor didnt pick up anything at all since I installed it a month ago. I am currently using Spyware Doctor with Ewido (this program is slowing down my pc too) and NOD32. Guess I am a safe surfer coz NOD32 picks up the nasties while the other 2 just sit on my com and do nothing. ;) . Thanks.

Regards,
LIW

[zerospyware]

I prefer spysweeper to spyware doctor. I find spyware doctor is too high in cpu usage, and a bit more hassle than its worth for what it detects. I'm obviously biased but I also think its worth trying Zerosypware for a 15 day trial. Its usually rated top 3 with Spysweeper and Spyware doctor, but provides several features that the others don't and is much more informative and less taxing on the cpu.

[manOFpeace]

Webroot Spy Sweeper for me. I tested them a while back and Spy Sweeper caught something Spyware Doctor missed. The choice was easy. ;)

[Chris12923]

I may be the blacksheep here but I use/have been using Spyware Doctor and have had only 1 false positive. The latest version is way about the old versions. More features with Spysweeper? Can you tell me the extra features you are talking about? I have used Spysweeper in the past including version 4 but not 4.5 and have seen nothing that impress' me more that Spyware Doctor. Just my opinion and it seems to differ with the rest of the group but just letting you know.

Thanks,

Chris

[JRCATES]

LOL....you're not the lone blacksheep, Chris....because I posted above that I use, like, and find Spyware Doctor to be effective as well. I haven't experienced very many FPs with the product either over the past year (maybe two - both involving manual scans of the HOSTS file).....my real complaint is the lack of a forum and user community presense. Reporting things like FPs to "customer service" by creating and submitting a ticket, and then waiting for a reply and/or fix to be issued is a bit painful....and that's why I like to see a forum presense (something SpySweeper DOES offer).

But just to show that opinions will vary.....check out CNET/Download.com's reviews for Spyware Doctor and SpySweeper. I'm not saying that I agree with their complete rankings, but I do find their reasoning interesting, especially comparing FPs for Spyware Doctor and SpySweeper. While they rank the two products identical in their overall evaluation and review scoring, I find it particular interesting what "the bad" is when naming the pros and cons of SpySweeper. Notice below, under "the bad"....what they have to say about SpySweeper and FPs:

http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/8483/cnetspywarereview6bk.png

And here's the link to CNET/Download.com's complete review for their top ten spyware removers:

http://www.download.com/Ten-Spyware-Killers//1200-2023_4-5157375.html?tag=hed

[zerospyware]

Hi all,

I've noticed a lot of opinions posted based on personal experiences and reviews. Thought I'd throw my 2 cents in from an industry insider perspective. Let me know what you think. Pardon the long post ahead:

Its hard to compare any two anti-spyware products purely on the basis of false positives and detection and removal capability, either from reviews or from anecdotal testing. Nearly all of the products in this space have false positives. We test our product as well as the competitors mentioned here weekly looking for detection and removal rates and false positives. It varies so much from week to week that its hard to make conclusive determiniations about whether one of these products (or ours) is consistently better at finding spyware, or has less false positives. This is simply a result of the timing and content of the updates vs the test set tested against. Reviewer generally throw a test set of 20-30 spyware at a matrix of products and see which one comes out on top. If you tried the same review with a different set of spyware you would get a different set of results, every time. the only differentiation you would be able to spot is clusters of apps that perform within the same relative rangers. Spysweeper, Spyware Doctor and Zerospyware generally score in the top cluster (order varies from test to test and week to week) Counter Spy and Microsoft Defender in the next tier. SpyBot and Adaware, CA, Trend, Mcaffee, Norton toward the lower end, and the other 200 plus antispyware apps toward the bottom. If this is what happens during controlled testing, then it is even less scientific to select one application over another based on short term experience of a false positive, or better detection.

To really differentiate you have to dig deeper. For instance removal capability on chronic spyware, or evasive spyware, ie.. Varients of CWS shredder, ABetterInternet, Haxdoor, Smithfraud, SpyAxe,SpyFalcon, etc.. Is a serious differentiator. Very few applications out there can remove them at all. Why? because some of these varients, change their name, file size, signature value. some employ rootkits, some use or attach to system processes, some use keep alive processes. This is where the better apps really shine, and most of the rest don't bother.

For an anti-spyware company detection of applications and false positives is reflection of the efficiency, focus, manpower, infrastructure and resources you have to throw at the task. Generally the process is relatively straightforward. At our company development efforts to combat new varients with constantly changing evasive tactics is the more difficult target. In terms of focus.. its still pretty difficult for any anti-spyware company to have complete coverage.. The scale of updates required is too broad. So the decision on which updates to focus on is a difficult one. We have chosen our primary focus to be the spyware that affects our user base. I can't speak for how the others make their decision on where to focus. We do this by receiving reports of process and detection activity from any of our users who opt in to have the application send this to us. From here we analyze this data to look for possible mutations, new spyware, and create trending reports. We then prioritize the inclusion of spyware in proportion to the number of users affected. In addition we perform some random harvesting, and search for spyware drawn from monitoring security forums and a variety of other sources.

The problem we have encountered here is that in several reviews for our product, reviewers chose spyware test sets that included spyware that were not popular or common. Often these may include spyware that we have in our database, but with varients that we have not yet updated.

My point is this aside from gross generalizations of clusters of products, specific detection and removal rates as well as false positives are not particularly useful indicators of which product is better than another.

Features, performance, support, and removal of chronic evasive spyware are far better differentiators. I'm not sure about the current version of Spyware doctor, but in our last tests only Spysweeper and Zerospyware included Pre-OS boot spyware removal capability, which is absolutely necessary in removing some of the system process attached evasive spyware. One of my own issues with Spyware Doctor (which I was recently running on my system) was that the performance impact was too great when it scanned, interfering with my work on my laptop. I haven't run Spysweepr for a long time so this assesment is not conclusive or comparitive, but illustrative. One of the features that I can't do without from our own product is the real time automated discovery feature which highlights unknown processes or dll's running on my system. Right now out of 104 processes and dll's running on my system 9 are identified as unknown. From the file info automatically retreived by the software I know that these are all ok. But every time my system is acting weird I rush to this panel.

So I'm wondering what key features or capabilities power users on this forum really love about one application over another (aside from detection and false positives). Looks like the key issues so far are cpu performance and forum support.

-D

[Chris12923]

{QUOTE-> I'm not sure about the current version of Spyware doctor, but in our last tests only Spysweeper and Zerospyware included Pre-OS boot spyware removal capability, which is absolutely necessary in removing some of the system process attached evasive spyware. <-QUOTE}
Spyware Doctor does have pre system boot removal. So it can remove the infections if the need ever arrises.

{QUOTE-> One of my own issues with Spyware Doctor (which I was recently running on my system) was that the performance impact was too great when it scanned, interfering with my work on my laptop. <-QUOTE}
This should not be a problem as of late. This was a factor some months ago but resource usage and/or system slowdown is much better now.

{QUOTE-> So I'm wondering what key features or capabilities power users on this forum really love about one application over another (aside from detection and false positives). Looks like the key issues so far are cpu performance and forum support. <-QUOTE}
I would say for products like this it should be detection, low false positives, removal, and good support.

I do want to thank you zerospyware for posting. As well as letting us know your opinion. I think it's great that you get involved and ask for users opinions.

Thanks,

Chris

[Mrkvonic]

Hello,
My experience:
Both Spyware Doctor and Spy Sweeper run a bit heavy.
In my tests, Spyware Doctor only found false positives; Spy Sweeper found genuine malware. So I'd say go for Spy Sweeper.
Mrk

[cmwilson]

{QUOTE-> One advantage that SpySweeper does have over Spyware Doctor is a dedicated user forum. This makes it much easier to report the FPs that Hard Rocker is talking about. <-QUOTE}

I was unaware that SpySweeper has a user forum. Can you point me to it please? I have been unable to find it.

[Eldar]

{QUOTE-> I was unaware that SpySweeper has a user forum. Can you point me to it please? I have been unable to find it. <-QUOTE}Have a look at CastleCops Spysweeper (http://castlecops.com/f163-Spysweeper.html). ;)

[cmwilson]

{QUOTE-> Have a look at CastleCops Spysweeper (http://castlecops.com/f163-Spysweeper.html). ;) <-QUOTE}

Excellent! Thanks!

[Eldar]

You're welcome cmwilson. ;)

[Smokey]

{QUOTE-> I may be the blacksheep here but I use/have been using Spyware Doctor <-QUOTE}
I changed from Spy Sweeper to Spyware Doctor.

Guess i'm a black sheep too;)

[Chris12923]

Glad to see you made the switch. I'm sure you'll be happy with it.

EDIT: Smokey can I ask what factors were involved in you making the switch? This might help other users that are having trouble deciding between the two.

Thanks,

Chris

[worldcitizen]

{QUOTE-> Tried Spyware Doctor about 6 months ago and it produced 11 FP's, of which some of them were Cyberlink application's. E-mailed the author and uninstalled it. Won't give the time of day to something that targets obvious good apps as spyware. On a side note: I trialled Zerospyware and my first scan came up clean. So there's a company showing you that you don't need to produce FP's to snare a customer.

muf <-QUOTE}


I downloaded and tested spyware doctor product and found it's 'infiltrations' fake and not based on real infections.

On first scan it found 313 'infections' which turned out to be IE temp pages cache. I deleted the IE cache with a free cleaner and Spyware Doctor then only detected 17 'infections'.

I then downloaded Ad Aware Personal and did a scan and found that the others were harmless MRU traces in registry, deleted them with Ad aware, ran another Spyware Doctor Scan and I was clean.

The troubling thing is that the 'hype' said that my 'infections' were 'CWS Trojans which is a lot of bull. This is nothing but fraud and scare tactics taking advantage of the gullible.

There is a massive difference bewtween having a malicious CWS program installed and the IE temporary cache and Spyware Doctor labelled almost 300 temporary IE cache pages as 'CWS Trojans'. So much bulldust I have never seen in my life.

Dave

[Smokey]

{QUOTE-> I downloaded and tested spyware doctor product and found it's 'infiltrations' fake and not based on real infections. <-QUOTE}
I have other (positive) experiences

{QUOTE-> On first scan it found 313 'infections' which turned out to be IE temp pages cache. I deleted the IE cache with a free cleaner and Spyware Doctor then only detected 17 'infections'. <-QUOTE}
Such a negative behaviour didn't happened on my machines.

{QUOTE-> The troubling thing is that the 'hype' said that my 'infections' were 'CWS Trojans which is a lot of bull. This is nothing but fraud and scare tactics taking advantage of the gullible. <-QUOTE}
Is a heavy statement.
PC Tools can sue your for that.

{QUOTE-> So much bulldust I have never seen in my life. <-QUOTE}
Is your personal opinion.

[worldcitizen]

Smokey,

I only told the truth.

I downloaded Spyware Doctor only over an hour ago and did the scan only half an hour ago and it labelled 313 IE temp cache pages as CWS Trojan. I deleted my cache and only got 17 infections on the next scan. Then I used Ad Aware and it reported around 20 MRU traces in registry which it said could be ignored. Spyware Doctor said they were backdoor trojans. I deleted them with Ad Aware and then ran SWD and it found nothing.

There was no REAL spyware on my PC and I knew it but these guys have got to sell their product so they have to make people believe they are infected.

I only posted the facts of what happened. I don't care who thinks I'm a liar and who thinks I'm not. I'm not here to lie and deceive. I stated the facts and if people are not open minded enough to trust each other then they will never learn from each others genuine experiences.

I am only saying that ALL my 'infections' were false positives all 330 of them, but hyped up in language by Spyware Doctor to make me alarmed. I don't give a damn if you believe me or not. I told you the facts about what happened to me only a half hour ago. Spyware Doctor in my opinion is generating false positives deliberately to win customers. It's a pity that a company has to stoop so low to get money. 330 false positives is no small number. If they were real infections I wouldn't be online posting to you!!

Cheers

Dave

[Chris12923]

{QUOTE-> I deleted my cache and only got 17 infections on the next scan. Then I used Ad Aware and it reported around 20 MRU traces in registry which it said could be ignored. Spyware Doctor said they were backdoor trojans. I deleted them with Ad Aware and then ran SWD and it found nothing.

There was no REAL spyware on my PC and I knew it but these guys have got to sell their product so they have to make people believe they are infected. <-QUOTE}
So 17 MRU traces detected by SD but 20 detected by Ad Aware? So if these are not spy/adware then why does Ad Aware even list them giving you the option to ignore? If you are saying that the 17 found by SD were 'fake' then that means based on the logic you have shown that Ad Aware actually had 3 more 'fake' detections than SD. Also in case you were unaware SD does have an ignore option also.

The other temp files that you deleted how were you sure they were not real threats?

Thanks,

Chris

[worldcitizen]

Hi Chris,

Ad Aware alert said that the MRU instances were negligable and did not pose a real risk. Not really malware in the true sense of the word as far as Ad Aware was concerned.

The point I was trying to make was that SD was over exaggerating the seriousness of the threats when really they weren't. I feel that SD was trying to enhance the users perception of the threats being serious while they were not. I'm not saying SD is not a good program but that the 330 'infections' it reported, 313 it labelled CWS trojans which were nothing but IE cached pages is over the top. It was very strange. Spy Sweeper as well as Windows Defender and Giant AS never ever detected & labelled stacks of IE temp files as CWS trojans. A newbie who wouldn't know the difference would think SD caught 330 infiltrations and bought the product when all that needed to be done was to clean out the cache with a free internet cleaner. I'm quite disappointed at this find. It's a hell of a lot of false positives for a trial version. I wonder why?::) ::)

Cheers

Dave

[Eldar]

Those many false positives was exactly my reason to dump Spyware Doctor.
Even after I tried it a second time, I still got FP's. :-\

I don't think it's to scare people, but they need to address these FP's ASAP.
It's been a year or so since I first tried and while it wasn't listed as a rogue, it
produced numerous FP's at that time, which freaked me out since I didn't know.

I'm not saying the product is bad, but more work must be done before
adding signatures to avoid those FP's. We wouldn't want another PP. ;D

While Spy Sweeper produced some FP's, I never had that many, so I'll stick with Spy Sweeper. :)

To each his own to use whatever you like. ;)

[worldcitizen]

I was all ready to buy it today and had a discount coupon but decided to test it and I'm glad I did. There's no need for the entire IE cache to be listed as infected. No other anti-spyware program I've come across has done that and I've tested a lot of them just recently. Most of them are great but SD was overkill. The FP's were generated with the trial version and I am suspicious about that as 330 is definitely not normal. A few I can accept but that many to me indicates it's by design and not an error.

If I had 313 CWS trojans on my PC I'm sure NOD 32 would have detected something wrong. Very strange indeed.

Cheers

Dave

[Chris12923]

{QUOTE-> Ad Aware alert said that the MRU instances were negligable and did not pose a real risk. Not really malware in the true sense of the word as far as Ad Aware was concerned. <-QUOTE}
This may be true but Ad Aware did detect them correct? The main difference is that it told you they were negligable and SD did not. I agree it would be nice if SD did say something to that effect as well. But what I was trying to get across is that both programs did detect the MRU entries so its hard to say they were false or 'fake' detections.

{QUOTE-> I'm not saying SD is not a good program but that the 330 'infections' it reported, 313 it labelled CWS trojans which were nothing but IE cached pages is over the top. It was very strange. Spy Sweeper as well as Windows Defender and Giant AS never ever detected & labelled stacks of IE temp files as CWS trojans. <-QUOTE}
Not sure if you meant you checked the same files with all the programs you listed or not. It's kinda funny when we see a real virus on Jotti's detected by say 1 or 2 programs before any of the others we say how good it is. But in this case you say because you have never seen the other programs detect that many it must be false positives. Trust me I'm not saying they weren't false positives but I just think you should have sent at least a couple of the files into PCTools to see what they had to say. That way there would be pretty concrete proof they were false positives or not.

{QUOTE-> I'm not saying the product is bad, but more work must be done before
adding signatures to avoid those FP's. We wouldn't want another PP. <-QUOTE}
I totally agree false positives with SD or any other AS/AA/AV/AT.. should be at a minimum.

{QUOTE-> To each his own to use whatever you like. <-QUOTE}
Well said :)

EDIT: forgot to say thanks and name :)

Thanks,

Chris

[Smokey]

{QUOTE-> Smokey,
I am only saying that ALL my 'infections' were false positives all 330 of them, but hyped up in language by Spyware Doctor to make me alarmed. I don't give a damn if you believe me or not. I told you the facts about what happened to me only a half hour ago. Spyware Doctor in my opinion is generating false positives deliberately to win customers. It's a pity that a company has to stoop so low to get money. 330 false positives is no small number. If they were real infections I wouldn't be online posting to you!!
<-QUOTE}
For the convenience i quote here a reply about the subject in another thread, by Randy Bell, i'm thinking word after word exact the same:

"As for Spyware Doctor, it gets very high ratings at CNET and elsewhere. Its detection rate is comparable to the former GIANT A.S on which MSAS is based. So I would have toi say Spyware Doctor is a first-rate A.S. scanner. Now, as with all scanners {AV, AT, AS} -- you have to show some intelligence in interpreting the results and you have to customize the scanner to meet your needs. If Spyware Doctor flags something you want to keep {something you deem not be too risky}, then just put that in the Ignore List. The same would apply, if we were talking about MSAS {GIANT} or Spy Sweeper or any of the other scanners: Use intelligence to interpret the results, and customize the scanner to fit your needs."

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?p=708223#post708223

The post is one year old, but his remarks are still valid.

[worldcitizen]

Chris,

You're right about the MRU's, only the warning status was different. It's a pity I didn't report the other ones because I knew what they were straight away. I empty my IE temp files very often so it was just a session where I hadn't emptied the cache yet.

Dave

[Atomas31]

Hi,

Personnally, I would recommend Spysweeper over the latest version of Spyware doctor...

The reasons for wich I wouldn't recommend the latest version (3.5) of spyware doctor are the following :

1) This version seems to lock your drive wich made unusable some microsoft service/component like CHKDSK and others. I also suspect this version to give problem with other softwares... On that particular problem, their technicien have told me that they know the problem and working on it (that's already a few months)....

2) Since recently (the last few weeks) the F/P are back in force and for one, I have right now at least 15 infections found (Backdoor.sdbot.ADS) on my clean system. The funny thing with that one is the fact that this is a recurring one (related with SVKP registry items)... Generally PCtools always take a few months to solved that F/P in particular wich is very frequent with SD. You can see that Backdoor.sdbot.ADS was a problem almost 6 month ago : http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=105444&highlight=spyware+doctor (and I had to jump trough a lot of hoop to get it resolved back then) and since a few weeks that false positive is back and a few other...

3) Since a few of their latests version, I simply can't make a complete scan because of the Hosts files scanner. That little rascal take a few hours to go through my host files (less than 9000 entries) and that if it doesn't loop indefinetly....

4) Their technical support is pathetic... Trying to report F/p is really a pain in the a** and they generally always answer you to uninstall and reinstall the program to solve the problems (and that whatever the problem is)!!!!!

So, if you have to choose between Spysweeper or Spyware doctor, for the moment, I will strongly recommend Spysweeper and that, until Spyware doctor solved their numerous problems and get their act straight...

Best regards,
Atomas31

[Chris12923]

{QUOTE-> Chris,

You're right about the MRU's, only the warning status was different. It's a pity I didn't report the other ones because I knew what they were straight away. I empty my IE temp files very often so it was just a session where I hadn't emptied the cache yet.

Dave <-QUOTE}
No prob. Well maybe next release you can give it ago again. You know how it is with security type companies. Always improving for the most part. Thanks for the discussion though. Hopefully we'll have another one soon enough maybe about something else even :)

{QUOTE-> The reasons for wich I wouldn't recommend the latest version (3.5) of spyware doctor are the following :

1) This version seems to lock your drive wich made unusable some microsoft service/component like CHKDSK and others. I also suspect this version to give problem with other softwares... On that particular problem, their technicien have told me that they know the problem and working on it (that's already a few months).... <-QUOTE}
This is very unfortunate situation that I was unaware of. I hope they will resolve it soon.

{QUOTE-> 2) Since recently (the last few weeks) the F/P are back in force and for one, I have right now at least 15 infections found (Backdoor.sdbot.ADS) on my clean system. The funny thing with that one is the fact that this is a recurring one (related with SVKP registry items)... Generally PCtools always take a few months to solved that F/P in particular wich is very frequent with SD. You can see that Backdoor.sdbot.ADS was a problem almost 6 month ago : http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showt...spyware+doctor (and I had to jump trough a lot of hoop to get it resolved back then) and since a few weeks that false positive is back and a few other... <-QUOTE}

Hopefully you have sent them the FP's to help them resolve it quickly.

{QUOTE-> 3) Since a few of their latests version, I simply can't make a complete scan because of the Hosts files scanner. That little rascal take a few hours to go through my host files (less than 9000 entries) and that if it doesn't loop indefinetly.... <-QUOTE}

I assume they are aware of the situation?

{QUOTE-> 4) Their technical support is pathetic... Trying to report F/p is really a pain in the a** and they generally always answer you to uninstall and reinstall the program to solve the problems (and that whatever the problem is)!!!!! <-QUOTE}

This seems to be the word on the street. I haven't really seen that side because I rarely have to contact them with support issues and have had only 2 FP's I think in almost 2 years.

{QUOTE-> So, if you have to choose between Spysweeper or Spyware doctor, for the moment, I will strongly recommend Spysweeper and that, until Spyware doctor solved their numerous problems and get their act straight... <-QUOTE}
Thanks for the input and as always good hearing from you!

Thanks,

Chris

[Atomas31]

Salut Chris12923,

Well, I don't know if PCtools engineer are aware of every thing I report here but one think is sure is that they should be... Otherwise, I am not the one who is gonna communicate with them since I dislike very much their technical support and there stupid answers... It is always a nightmare to have to deal with there technical support (at least from my experience).

Just in case, you should also stay away from there latest release of Registry Mechanic since that one screw my system and the system of a few people (for exemple : it is deleting system32 files) and they didn't seem to resolved the situation in term of the files to deleted that detect RM (I report that situation a few month)...

Best regards,
Atomas31