Okay, nothing happens, now what?

[HeyPhil]

Ever since I installed Spywareblaster, I have had trouble running it. I double click the icon or select spywareblaster from the start/programs menu, and I hear perhaps two or three clicks from my hard drive and then nothing. I tried doing this several times in succession (after the three fingered salute as the only way to shut off the current application- I get the standard "the program is not shutting down" blurb), but it is still hit or miss whether the program will operate. I cannot get the program to operate at all tonight, and I need to check some things on the controls. Running Windows 98, IE6 with SmartExplorer overlay, IBM machine. I get no error messages, just an eerie silence. Any suggestions

[Pieter_Arntz]

Hi HeyPhil,

Could you try to doubleclick the SpywareBlaster.exe in the SpywareBlaster folder and let us know what happens then?
This would be helpful in figuring out what is going wrong.

TIA,

Pieter

[HeyPhil]

Actually, Pieter, nothing was marked spywareblaster.exe, although there was an icon for a shortcut. I doubleclicked it, and it just opened up- after about five minutes. Is it normally this "sticky?" Even Spybot S&D opens in a minute or less, and I have long ago decided the best bet with that one is patience. Since I haven't had the program opened since I set it up, I'm going to try to update the program now. Thanx for your help, sorry if this seems a little whiney.

Hi HeyPhil,

Is it normally this "sticky?"

I know on my horse and buggy computer it takes over a minute to open up.
But it sure ends up being worth the wait.

Regards,
Douglas

[HeyPhil]

Okay, I admit, my machine was made in a previous millennium, but I guess I just need to have patience with this one. It also "hanged" on me after I updated, so I restarted with the same results. I guess I just have to start it and forgetaboutit until it actually warms up to me. I guess some things are worth the wait, like love and fireworks.

Hi again,

I'll bet you and I are the only ones on the forum with computers from the Middle Ages.

It also "hanged" on me after I updated

It does the same for me (although it doesn't really hang, just takes a very long time).

I guess some things are worth the wait, like love and fireworks.

Hey, you must know my wife. She tells me that all the time.

Regards
Douglas

[LowWaterMark]

SpywareBlaster does use a lot of CPU cycles gathering the initial state of all the protected items out of the registry. If you have a CPU monitor, try running that and watching the spike in CPU time... As long as it is pegged, that'll be SpywareBlaster gathering it thoughts prior to displaying its main window.

I just tested v2.6 on my old Windows 95 system, a Pentium Pro 200 MHz. It takes 34 seconds of CPU time to gather all the info and open SpywareBlaster fully on that system.

On early Windows I think there was a utility included called: SYSMON.EXE in the \Windows\ directory. One of the things is can display graphically is Kernel: Processor Usage.

[HeyPhil]

Okay, I'm not exactly running 3.1 on a 386, either, but at 32 mhz, I'm running about one tenth as fast as your 200, and I'm using 98 instead of 95. I'm just going to have a little patience, unless someone has a good idea. I did use spybot's settings functions to shut off a bunch of unnecessary startup programs, so I have fewer processes running at any given time. I'm guessing less is going on here than met the eye. I'm almost positive, however, that nothing was happening in at least a few of my earliest attempts to start the program. Thanks to all of you for your help, let me know if anything good comes of this. Phil