System Freeze After Spywareblaster Installation

[evollbach]

Yesterday both my husband and I downloaded and installed Spywareblaster on our computers. I didn't and am not having trouble with it on my computer, but Keith did on his.

After the installation, his mouse , he says, froze intermittently. He's not sure, but maybe his entire system froze; he couldn't tell because the mouse wasn't working. I say "intermittently" because, he says, sometimes it worked for 20 seconds or so and sometimes not for 20 seconds or so. So he uninstalled Spywareblaster last night, and this morning he is still having the same problem.

He's running Windows 98SE, if that makes any difference. But so am I.

I'm editing this a while after I originally wrote it because Keith just told me something else. After he installed Spywareblaster, he could no longer open most of the Web sites in his Favorites (Internet Explorer) list. After he uninstalled Spywareblaster, he could again open them.

So I tried to open two of those sites, space.com and ebay.com, on my computer. They open, no problem. Again, I do have Spywareblaster installed.

Beth

[javacool]

Originally Posted by evollbach

Yesterday both my husband and I downloaded and installed Spywareblaster on our computers. I didn't and am not having trouble with it on my computer, but Keith did on his.

After the installation, his mouse , he says, froze intermittently. He's not sure, but maybe his entire system froze; he couldn't tell because the mouse wasn't working. I say "intermittently" because, he says, sometimes it worked for 20 seconds or so and sometimes not for 20 seconds or so. So he uninstalled Spywareblaster last night, and this morning he is still having the same problem.

He's running Windows 98SE, if that makes any difference. But so am I.

I'm editing this a while after I originally wrote it because Keith just told me something else. After he installed Spywareblaster, he could no longer open most of the Web sites in his Favorites (Internet Explorer) list. After he uninstalled Spywareblaster, he could again open them.

So I tried to open two of those sites, space.com and ebay.com, on my computer. They open, no problem. Again, I do have Spywareblaster installed.

Beth

Hi,

SpywareBlaster certainly shouldn't be able to cause any such problems. It is possible that this is just a coincidence (I've heard of much stranger ones before), but I just am not sure how any of the protection methods that SpywareBlaster employs could cause this issue.

Did you press the "Disable All Protection" button before uninstalling SpywareBlaster? If not, the protection remains on your system, so you might try reinstalling and pressing that button - just in case.

Best regards,

-Javacool

[evollbach]

Keith says he "disabled most of the protection but not all." He did just run Scandisk and Defrag, and he says it seems fine now (although I think he chose "thorough" only part of the time in Scandisk but got impatient because it was taking so long so unchecked "thorough").

I take back what I just said above. NOW Keith says his computer is freezing again. Oh brother! So I suggested he do what you suggested, i.e., reinstall, enable, disable, and uninstall. He says, "That's crazy." Hey, be glad you didn't marry him. :-) And now you see why I insisted we each have our own computer. Beth

[quote=javacool]Hi,

SpywareBlaster certainly shouldn't be able to cause any such problems. It is possible that this is just a coincidence Did you press the "Disable All Protection" button before uninstalling SpywareBlaster?

[evollbach]

This is on behalf of my husband. I'm not having a problem with SpywareBlaster on my computer, but Keith is on his.

The other day he downloaded and installed SpywareBlaster and immediately had problems. His mouse would freeze intermittently, and the system slowed down. He uninstalled SpywareBlaster but didn't first "Disable all." The problems persisted. He scanned the computer for viruses and found two. (I don't know the names of the viruses.) He tried to clean them with McAfee and couldn't, so McAfee deleted them. Still, his problems persisted. He reinstalled SpywareBlaster, then disabled all and uninstalled it. Still, his problems persisted, and SpywareBlaster kept showing up in his Task List even though he uninstalled it after "disabling all."

I don't think the viruses were caused by the SpywareBlaster download/install because I installed it on my computer, too, and had no problem. And I ran a virus scan on my computer, and it's clean. It's odd, though, that the problems didn't show up until after the install, and it's odd that he can't uninstall SpywareBlaster.

Anyone have a suggestion for Keith?

Thanks,
Beth

[TonyKlein]

Strange indeed...

That would seem to indicate that Keith didn't shut down Spywareblaster before uninstalling it; always a bad idea....

However, it's very unlikely to produces problems such as the ones you're mentioning...

Anyway, bring up Task Manager, and end task on the Spywareblaster.exe process.

Redownload the SB installer, and reinstall.
Next, shut down the program, only then uninstall from "Add or Remove Programs"

Tell us how that goes!

[LowWaterMark]

Originally Posted by evollbach

He reinstalled SpywareBlaster, then disabled all and uninstalled it. Still, his problems persisted, and SpywareBlaster kept showing up in his Task List even though he uninstalled it after "disabling all."

Is he sure it is SpywareBlaster in the task manager process list? SpywareBlaster is not a run in the background kind of program. Worst case you merely reboot and it's gone. It's main program has no autostartup link. But this concerns me...

Originally Posted by evollbach

He scanned the computer for viruses and found two. (I don't know the names of the viruses.) He tried to clean them with McAfee and couldn't, so McAfee deleted them.

As you noted, there are no viruses in SpywareBlaster, though there was this false positive that McAfee had to fix a while back. (Perhaps Keith's McAfee is out of date and still running the bad version.)

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=37735

If he had really viruses, or an existing spyware hijack, then those are the most likely cause for his problems. Installing SpywareBlaster is either a coincidence of timing, and installing any new programs could have triggered the problem, or he has an existing spyware infection that is resistent to anti-spyware programs.

One approach is to run through the entire scanning, cleaning and log posting process described in this thread:

HOW TO? Read here about how to post your log!!