Spyware Doctor after loading consumes 90-95% of the CPU

Hi Bubba,

Let me ask an unrelated follow-up about Spyware Doctor, since you seem to know the application well. Others of course can reply as well. Please feel free to move this to a separate thread if you wish.

I run Process Explorer, a free download from www.sysinternals.com, and recommend it to everyone. I think it's essentially a beefed-up version of Task Manager's Performance function with a lot of other features that I will freely admit I don't begin to understand. Nevertheless, it's well worth having just because it gives you a continuous more or less real-time breakdown of what processes are running and how much CPU time they are using. If my system is running very slow, this is the first place to look to see what's going on. For that one function alone, Process Explorer is worth it.

At any rate, I noticed that at startup Spyware Doctor after loading consumes literally 90-95% of the CPU time in two closely connected periods that total almost 5 minutes! I wonder what is going on here? I don't think it is doing a quick scan at startup. It's a bit annoying because it takes the better part of 10 minutes altogether before I can get to work, what with everything loading.

I could of course disable SD at startup, but I do like to keep it there, as it is a top rated AS application that offers the full range of protection, even to unregistered users like me. Plus, I assume it would still take the same 5 minutes whenever I loaded it, at startup or otherwise.

Note also that I cannot get any help at all from SD tech support, as they no longer respond to any questions from unregistered users (those running the free version). I can understand why. Their response to any question is that they cannot find your registration number, and please submit it if you have one.

 

Good idea as it will keep the Spysweeper thread separate

As for your SD question....I would suggest disabling all un-necessary services(AV, Firewall....etc), make sure SD is not set to connect for updates upon start-up or otherwise, shutdown PC, dis-connect cable in regards to Internet connection, re-start PC and go from there until placing someone back into the equation causes this high CPU usgae. I would also make sure I had the latest version of SD.

Just some thoughts,
Bubba

 

@dcdc

Same problems over here, thats one of the reasons i won't pick this one...

 

Same problem over here; I just end the process (Swdoctor.exe) using Task Manager whenever it happens, which isn't often and I can't predict when, i.e., there's no pattern that I can see.

When it does happen, my PC crawls to the point of not being usable) and then immediately restart Spyware Doctor (so I'm protected).

I'd really like to solve the riddle. Nella

 

I wasn't sure if there might have been something weird about my download of version 3.8, or perhaps some malware well hidden within. Form what I have heard recently, advanced malware now attacks anti-malware applications, and that there are more reported vulnerabilities in AS and AV than in IE. So it's possible that something had infected SD and has not been detected by it or my other AS/AV.

Anyway, SD has a new version out, 4.0. SD is one of those applications, at least in the free version, that will update the definitions but not the application program itself.

So I uninstalled SD 3.8 and downloaded SD 4.0. I went through all the settings and made sure it was not doing any scanning at startup, which is an option, as on many other AS applications.

Sad to say, same slow process. I have no idea what SD is doing and why it is taking so long. But whatever it is, it seems to be in two parts of 2-3 mintes each. Too bad, because SD is highly rated and a very good application otherwise in my opinion.

Let me add one thing I do NOT like about SD. A while ago they changed their update procedure, and after the update there is an automatic restart of SD that you can't stop. Most other AS applications e.g. a-squared will tell you the program needs to restart for the changes to take effect and ask you if you want to restart it now or later. Not SD. And of course what happens after the restart? Another 5 minutes that the machine is tied up, just like when you boot up. A poor design in my opinion.

My next step is to look into Bubba's suggestions. Should have done that in the first place, but I was going to update SD to 4.0 anyway.

 

Guys,

SD from PC Tools is using 3 years old engine and I was told they are developing something new to replace this old engine of SD.

For people experiencing high CPU usage, I would suggest you guys to close any other AntiSpy as SD does offers aggressive realtime protection any others and may bogged down CPU resource.

I have tested work aground, try removing all the tool files from SD folder.

C:\Program Files\Spyware Doctor\Tools\ directory

Remove all files (you'll have to close SD and from task mgr)

Then try starting SD again, I'm sure SD will load much faster and use low CPU, then perform live update and only download below essential tools.

* All scanners (General scanner, Memory scanner, registry scanner etc..)
* Keylogger Guard Engine + database
* Immunizer
* Spyware Doctor Network

 

Thanks, Consoleman.

I am still left to wonder what the heck Spyware Doctor is doing for 5 minutes. It can't be taking that long to load, and it is not doing any sort of scan/sweep that I can recognize. Hard to figure.

At any rate, both Spy Sweeper and Spyware Doctor came out tops by comfortable margins over the competition this week in PC Magazine (Sept. 19, 2006), and in PC World (Oct. 2006). Other than a voluntary contribution to Spybot, Spy Sweeper is the only AS I pay for.

I was surprised by Counterspy's relatively poor showing in both magazines. Spybot did not fare very well, but it never does in these tests. Still worth having though, in my opinion.

 

By the way, is there a more or less official Spyware Doctor forum similar to Wilders? SD tech support briefly referred me to winguides, which did not seem that good.

Not that I am critical of the support here, you understand.