Spyware Doctor™ 5.0

It has been released....

Download: Link

 

http://www.pctools.com/spyware-doctor/

 

Yes it Has been released! And Needs to be revoked staright away 18 seconds into a Scan and it Froze the hell out of my entire system (Vista Ultimate) and awkwardly refused to close down, untill I powered off my pc and powered on again. The Browsing speed with this installed is like being back on dial-up and Yes everything went back to normal once I uninstalled this weaker than wet toilet paper program.

Edit: Plus having said that! If it was so good as they claim!, Why them the need for a Popup Browser on uninstallation Offering me 6 Months at $9.95 to keep it installed

 

Re: Spyware Doctor™ 5.0

It froze my pc as well.
They better debug the thing

 

Hello,
I don't understand why you should try that FP.
Mrk

 

I've also had problems with this on Vista Ultimate. As with the betas it just seemed to cripple my machine and I couldn't even get SD open. In the end I had to power off so unistalled it as soon as I could.

Is there an online forum for SD where this is being acknowledged by PC Tools staff?

 

Have you tried contacting their customer support directly?

 

"Is there an online forum for SD where this is being acknowledged by PC Tools staff? "

Yes there is. http://www.pctools.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=54

People are absolutely trashing 5.0 as you can see in the forums.

 

Can anyone reply concerning how long it takes SD 5.0 to fully load at startup?

I use SD 4.0 in the free version, which does not allow you to remove any malware detected, but which is otherwise identical to the paid version.

Once it loads, it will literally consume almost 6 minutes of CPU time. I use Process Explorer to monitor system activity, and SD will hog 90-100% (!) of the CPU until it settles down. Until it does I can't do much on my machine, so once I'm online I will usually just put the computer in standby mode rather than shut it down completely.

I hope SD 5.0 is not such a resource hog. None of my other security software is that piggy.

 

I took a look at the forums. It seems like 5.0 should still be in beta, where most of these issues should be sorted out.

They'll work out the bugs soon enough, I suspect, but until then it's really annoying.

 

Is it still pay to remove

 

Yep

Pay to remove malware it finds is still what PC Tools is doing.

 

I'm using beta 11 ver 5.0.0.169 on two Win Xp boxes w/ no issues at all. I canned SWD ver 4 due to high resource usage, constant updates and general sluggish PC performance i.e. slowed to a crawl...

Ver 4 was terrific at detection if you could trade off performance. SWD ver 5 beta runs flawlessly for me. Tech support was right on as soon as I had an issue (used the beta forum) PC Tools seems to be trying to address any issue anyone brings up. I was not a big fan of PC Tools as a company, but the effort they're putting into this app -is impressive.

...screamer

 

I'm not entirely comfortable with that policy myself, since it is used by dubious antispyware applications to suck people into buying annual subscriptions. A scan reveals some malware that may or may not be there - now pay us to remove it. A free scan becomes a costly scam.

But all antimalware applications (except Spybot and perhaps a few others) limit the features in the free versions; why provide the full version for nothing? Most with which I am familiar will remove the active protection feature after the trial period ends, but still allow scanning and updating, and often deletion of infections. A few will time you out for good after the trial period ends, but some will allow repeated reinstalls. Other don't even offer a free scan or trial period before purchase. It's all over the map.

Spyware Doctor, at least in the 4.0 version, does offer active OnGuard protection in the free version. Ad-Aware SE in the free version, for example, does not; it will scan and remove malware, but not block it for you.

 

Re: Spyware Doctor™ 5.0

Personally I don,t feel anything wrong with this policy unless the scan report is fake/ false. Atlleast u ahve a free option to try.

 

Re: Spyware Doctor™ 5.0

i have heard that the scans are fake with the free version or at least used to be.
some people reported the free version found like 20 bits of spyware brought it installed and it found nothing
lodore

 

Hello,
To emphasize the above point: I have found ONLY FP EVER with SD. So you make your own conclusions...
Mrk

 

Well, I believe the site Spyware Warrior is an excellent source of information, and Spyware Doctor is one of only seven recommended AS programs.

There is by contrast a huge list of unrecommended AS applications: http://www.spywarewarrior.com/rogue_anti-spyware.htm .

I too have had some FPs with Spyware Doctor that eventually disappeared from SD detection and were never reported by other AS apps, but I have had FPs from several other very reputable apps as well.

This is not to say that I would personally endorse Spyware Doctor, but I would not go so far as to think of it as crapware either.

 

True, but that's exactly the point. How do you know if the scan report is legitimate or not? Great if it's legitimate, not so great if it isn't.

 

For sure, there are users that can know this.

 

I miss the older versions of spyware doctor that let you scan and delete.

 

So then, download and install the Older version

 

I don't remember the older version that allowed them to remove malware on a scan. And I had SD since V3. I'm going to assume anything before V3 probably doesn't get updated anymore.

 

I had the SD free version 3 and perhaps 2 as well, and neither one would provide removal of any malware they detected. I don't think PC Tools even offered the full version in a trial period, as some other AS vendors do.

As far as downloading an older version, would it still be available somewhere? The PC Tools site only lists SD 5.0. Usually vendors will remove older versions from their site once a newer one is available. Why continue to offer an out-of-date version? I suppose there is the possibility they might provide a download of an earlier version on request IF it were a paid version you had.

You could always try System Restore on your system, I suppose, to roll back to a previous version, or another backup system if you have one.

 

It appears after reading through the PC Tools forum mentioned here on post #8 that they are still having problems with SD 5.0.

It's a little amusing that their moderators are talking about "escalating" the problems to the developers. That's also a famous term LBJ and his administration used, for those old enough to remember.

I'm glad I held onto SD 4.0, and will continue to do so for some time. This particular version is a resource hog at startup, but otherwise has not caused a performance problem for me, nothing like 5.0 seems to be causing, especially with IE7.