Spy Sweeper

[Zom17]

And I thought it was just me... It has always been slow in scanning but the shields, in my experience, were good but come May of this year when I foolishly renewed for TWO years(! ) Shortly after I noticed freezing, slow load times, etc. If I knew this then I would NEVER have spent the money.

Chock it up to a painful, costly lesson.

[SoCalReviews]

Originally Posted by Zom17

And I thought it was just me... It has always been slow in scanning but the shields, in my experience, were good but come May of this year when I foolishly renewed for TWO years(! ) Shortly after I noticed freezing, slow load times, etc. If I knew this then I would NEVER have spent the money.

Chock it up to a painful, costly lesson.

I understand your pain with having paid for the two year SS renewal. I did the same thing a few years back but now there is only a few months left on my SS subscription. Besides this latest toolbar issue the slow boot times and system performance issues have become increasingly more annoying. This latest SS update seemed to make things even worse. However, since you have about a year and a half left on your subscription you could disable the SS auto startup option and use SS to run on demand scans once in a while. The other thing you could try to do is turn off some of the real time features that are causing the worst performance problems and let the scheduled scans run more often. I know the CastleCops forum has a SS forum where allot of recommended configuration settings are posted that help users find settings for better system performance.

You can hope they will release an improved update in the near future (which they usually do). The problem I have is they will release another update that causes new problems after fixing problems in the previous update. It is an endless circle of updates and debugging that I got tired of dealing with. Using SS for an on demand scanner or running the program but turning off many of the real time features might be the easiest thing to do while you find another anti-spyware program to replace it. If you have not already done so you should check out the anti-malware forum area here at Wilder's for advice about many free and other paid subscription anti-spyware/anti-malware applications.

[Zom17]

SoCalReviews, I really appreciate your response. I decided to go with another spyware program rather than fooling around with SS anymore. I am strongly considering SuperAntiSpyware because it has been getting very good reviews from users on several forums. Thanks.

[SUPERAntiSpy]

Originally Posted by Zom17

SoCalReviews, I really appreciate your response. I decided to go with another spyware program rather than fooling around with SS anymore. I am strongly considering SuperAntiSpyware because it has been getting very good reviews from users on several forums. Thanks.

One thing I can guarantee you is that we will never bundle anything "suspicous" with our software

[Zom17]

Originally Posted by SUPERAntiSpy

One thing I can guarantee you is that we will never bundle anything "suspicous" with our software

I downloaded the Pro 30 day trial; hope to get great results.

[SoCalReviews]

Originally Posted by Zom17

I downloaded the Pro 30 day trial; hope to get great results.

Zom17, You are welcome for the advice about SS. If you want you could use SS during the rest of your subscription time only for manual on demand scans even after you decide on a final replacement for real time anti-spyware (ASW) protection. Just be careful about those applying those SS program updates or simply update only the definitions.

I believe using a layered combination of security applications that are compatible with each other is very important. After using the trial software and after reading many helpful posts and replies by Nick (SUPERAntispy) and others in the anti-malware forum here at Wilder's I purchased the SuperAntispyware (SAS) Pro lifetime updates subscription. See post #23 in the thread below for more information about my decision.

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=187876

So far I have found this antivirus and antispyware combination to work well together...

NOD32 AV (paid)
SAS Pro (paid)
ThreatFire (free)

Others you can add:

Spybot S&D (free) w/immunizations and bad address blocking enabled
Spywareblaster (free) w/all protections enabled
Windows Defender (only because it's free)
FWoYC (firewall of your choice)

[Zom17]

I have NOD32 and it looks good so far with SAS. I'll look into ThreatFire. What do you think of Sandboxie and what, if I may ask, firewall do you run? Thanks.

[SoCalReviews]

Originally Posted by Zom17

I have NOD32 and it looks good so far with SAS. I'll look into ThreatFire. What do you think of Sandboxie and what, if I may ask, firewall do you run? Thanks.

Threatfire free is a type of HIPS program that is a nice complement to your other anti-malware programs. I haven't used Sandboxie but from what I have read it sounds like a good program for online security. I used the term FWoYC because I think there are a number of great paid subscription and great free options for firewall software. I have used ZoneAlarm Pro (ZAP) for many years (going back to ZAP v2). It is the FW program I am the most familiar with using. Therefore I currently have ZAP and ZASS (Security Suite with AV disabled) paid subscriptions that I use on my various systems. On my main desktop systems I am using the latest version of ZAP v7.0.408.000.

There are excellent free FW choices to seriously consider including Comodo, Kerio and PC Tools and ZA free. Just because some of the FW's are free doesn't mean they can't offer advanced top notch protection. Try some of them out to find a FW with an interface and features that you are comfortable with. Most of the advanced FWs have their annoyances, quirks, bugs, positives and negatives. Whether you are using an advanced free FW such as Comodo or paid FW such as ZAP you will probably have to spend some time experimenting with it's configuration and settings to ensure better compatibility with your other security software.

FW programs are always a subject of great debate in this forum. If you are using at least basic NAT router then the standard Windows SP2 firewall or the standard Windows Vista firewall is still an ok basic choice for the average non-technical Windows internet user. Power internet users might want a more advanced firewall like one of the ones I mentioned. Take a look at the "other firewalls" area for information and user opinions about the many different FW programs available.

[SamSpade]

I, too, was very disappointed that SS became so oppressively conflicted with my other security apps, espcially nod32 and comodo fw. I re-upped for 2 more years last year, but haven't used it on my main machine for 11 months. Its concept is good, I very much like the comprehensive approach SS takes -- very deep and broad -- but it comes at the expense of creating many conflicts with other security measures. Maybe that's why it now is not only anti-spy, but also anti-virus and firewall/HIPs. Until it is at the state of the art in all these areas, however, it must co-exist and play nicely with other products that are better; unfortunately, right now it seems to conflict too much with other security apps.


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[Longboard]

From the 'Rose' : SPySweeper definitely on the nose:
http://securitygarden.blogspot.com/2...-of-favor.html

Have made my feelings about SpySweeper clear before

This brings the chickies home to roost.
What are they thinking

Idle 2c speculation only:...Be interesting what may appear on/in the free firewall which has actually been getting some OK press: after this I for one would be steering in another direction.

[LoneWolf]

Spysweeper has definantly gone downhill form the days of 3.0/3.5

[ccsito]

Originally Posted by SamSpade

Until it is at the state of the art in all these areas, however, it must co-exist and play nicely with other products that are better; unfortunately, right now it seems to conflict too much with other security apps.

If that were to be achieved, that would mean all of the competitors should then close up shop since the ultimate software program has been produced. Most software authors write programs to be compatible with the Operating System. Whether they are compatible with any other "non-operating system" program is an optional requirement for their program. Usually, most programmers try to make programs compatible with "just enough" other programs that would also be present. If they attempted to reach 100% compatibility, that would be a never ending process because there are too many programs in the entire software world and those programs are not stagnant.