Spy Sweeper 5.0 Final released today

Same here Blackcat.

 

The Home and Sweep buttons are fast to open, but the Shields, Quarantine and Options buttons are quite sticky..

 

Indeed they are sticky!!
What I find is that this new version is even more resource hungry than the previous one.
I upgraded after imaging my system and downgraded again...
At this moment, I see no point in upgrading and getting an even more hungry resource hogg!...

 

I also found it very resource heavy. In fact the memory usage totaled 61,024K.

A major irritation was that I could not shut down one of the shields. I could not do it with Win Patrol or with Windows Task Manager.

All told, considering the memory usage and the shield that I could not shut down, I uninstalled it after the first day.

I was interested in whether it prevented UnHackMe from checking as earlier versions had done, and was pleased to find that there was no conflict.

On balance I decided I do not want to use it. I do not deny that it is one of the most effective AS applications, but it is not for me.

Best,
Jerry

 

Hm...As you can see, when talking about real-time shields, SpySpweeper used a lot of shields, 15 in total to guard against spyware, while SUPERAntiSpyware currently has the IE home page shield and the registry start up shield only (please correct me if I am wrong). Therefore, SUPERAntiSpyware is lighter and less resources hungry than SpySweeper. If SUPERAntiSpyware is going to add more shields in the future, it may also take up more resources, unless SUPERAntiSpyware has find a way to use very light resources while adding more real-time shields. When more shields are added to the program, compatibility problems with other programs may increase.

SpySweeper 5.0 is still new for the 5.0 series and I think they need some more time to polish it.

SUPERAntiSpyware (pictures from SUPERAntiSpyware's web site)

http://www.superantispyware.com/WebHelp/IMGSASHiJackProtection.gif

http://www.superantispyware.com/WebHelp/IMGSASRealTime.gif

SpySweeper

 

Hi Chubb,
I think you are correct in your statements. Counterspy is by far the heaviest anti-malware I have used, but SS is the second.

I have settled on SAS as the real-time anti-spyware application I am going to use. I was glad to see that SS did not conflict with anything except one shield on my laptop, which has F-Secure as the AV. That was not a problem with me.

Although I use one, and intend to continue to use SAS (lifetime license), I am not really convinced that any of the AS applications are necessary since many of the AVs and ATs have an anti-spyware capability. I am using KAV6, and Ewido in those two applications. I do like to layer my security.

Thanks for the comments.
Jerry

 

I have had a major issue with 5.0.1286. Just curious if anyone else has. I updated from 4.5. The upgrade went "smooth." Until, I ran the program. After the scan, "Blue Screen of Death." Windows has encountered a serious error. I use Ghost, copy from external hard drive back to regular hard drive. I have 4.5 again. Runs fine. I try 5.0 download a second time, exact same result. I read one of your fine comments about having to take spysweeper.exe out of Taskmanager, because it puts Spysweeperui.exe. I wonder if that is the entire source of conflict?

 

On my pc it also uses a lot of memory (60-70mb), but it does not feel heavy at all, it is much improved in this area (resoursces, not to be confused with memory usage) at least on my pc, in fact i would go as far as saying it is better than 4.5 in every area...again in my setup.

I much prefer a program that uses more memory, but is light, than one with low memory usage, but heavy in use if made to choose between two "evils".

I installed it "clean" = not ontop of a previous SS install.

 

Hi Don,

For resources, do you mean CPU usage? Yes, you are correct, and I might sometimes mixing up memory usage and CPU usage . Although the SunThreatengine.exe in CounterSpy used a lot of memory, 72M in my case, but it is not that resource hungry, so that I don't feel any slowdown in using CounterSpy. For Spysweeper, Spysweeper.exe used 25MB and SpysweeperUI.exe used 6MB RAM (15MB when checking for update on the web), but the CPU usage is not that highly fluctuating with high CPU usage. However, I experience a little slow down when SpySweeper is turned on, althought the slow down is not that great. It depends on how CounterSpy and Spysweeper do their job.

I think the resource usage problem in SpySweeper may be due to the fact SpySweeper is intercepting the monitoring process of other software. For example, when I look at the CPU usage in Task Manager, I noticed that Spysweeper.exe fluctuated between 0% to 33% when an e-mail arrived. The fluctuation stopped after a while. When the mail arrived, KAV may be scanning the mail in memory, and the SpySweeper shield therefore step in to lauch a scan of the memory. This makes a CPU jump in Spysweeper.exe. Would that be the case?

When more security software are running in the background, the shields in SpySweeper might work and intercept when other security software are also monitoring the memory, the BHO, activeX and host file, and that caused a jump in resources. Would that be the case?

 

For me and my laptop, this latest version of Spy Sweeper has been a DISASTER. I have spent the last hour or more with SEVERE lockups. The only way that I could shut the laptop down was to hold down the power button.

I have not experienced any problems like this until suddenly after installing this latest version of Spy Sweeper.

Even removing it took forever because of the fact that during the bootup the laptop would lockup or be severely slow after the computer finished loading Spy Sweeper.

The only way that I was finally able to remove Spy Sweeper was to IMMEDIATELY disable it during bootup. Then I clicked on "Start" --> "All Programs" --> spy weeper uninstall. (Previously I had tried the "Control Panel" --> "Add/Remove Programs" approach. But I was unsuccessful because the computer had already loaded Spy Sweeper during the bootup.

After this, I'll probably reinstall the previous 4.x that I had been running. But at this point I sure won't be installing again 5.05 anytime soon.

Edit: Okay.. after cooling off and now that it seems like my laptop is back to normal, I looked at some of the other previous threads and found something important:
"spysweeper 5.0 headache"
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=138676&highlight=spysweeper

I had installed 5.05 without first uninstalling 4.x . Now that 5.05 has been uninstalled perhaps I can assume that 4.x was uninstalled as well ? In my opinion it would have been helpful if SpySweeper had advised that one ought to remove 4.x first, especially since "5.0 and 4.5 used different services for monitoring and this may cause your conflict. WRSSSDK.exe is the service running in 4.5 but in 5.0, the service component is SpySweeper.exe. They are different files. If you run them together, you will definitely have a severe hang."

If I feel I have a lot of extra time to spare and wish to attempt to try 5.05 again, are there some extra steps I should take to make sure every trace of 4.x is removed ?

 

Current version, 5.0.5.1286 will auto load for you, if your subscription is current or you're buying it. I've used SS for years and this version is potent! Very protective and the scan, after the initial full scan, is extremely fast.

I'll not it #1 now and wait on CounterSpy's new version (I'm beta testing 2.0) and determine which has the best features.

 

Hi spysweeper 5.0 slowed my system down to much at startup and in use. so i disabled rhe shields for now. and just run ondemand

 

I have the same slow problem and the buttons are real slow. I got froze on the net and was mad as heck.....spy sweeper 5 is junk.........counter spy is bad enough, i went back to super anti spyware......

 

Here's a message I just sent to Webroot support:

This is a complaint about your new version 5. I've been using 4.5 since last November without a problem and a few days ago upgraded to 5. Since then my laptop performance has degraded and freezes randomly. When I checked the processes your program uses in task manager I saw two files that used over 50 megs of ram. I know you have a FAQ regarding this stating to disable other items in Windows startup. Are you kidding me?? I uninstalled 5.0 and reinstalled 4.5. In November I won't be renewing my annual subscription. Thanks for the bloatware.