Spy Sweepr with AV currently free AR at Staples

Staples is offering Webroot SpySweeper w/ Antivirus for free after a mail-in $35 rebate.

Can someone confirm, that like most other products, you can install Spy Sweeper without their AV, or if you do install both, you can disable them in startup, and run both on demand?

Even if you can't, it's a nice buy in case you need a 2nd scanner. You can always install and then uninstall after cleaning (just run Total Uninstall or Zsoft Uninstaller first to ensure you remove all the registry entries).

I know Spy Sweeper gets high grades by PC Mag and version 5.2 got the Editors Choice Award back in November, 2006.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2050533,00.asp


Does anyone know if it's still heavy on CPU resources?

 

Helllo quadrophonic,
its still heavy of resources.
it always has one process starting at boot time.
I use it for on demand only.
you can untick the antivirus check boxes if you want to buy it.
but people have used it realtime with kav/kis6.0 and other major antivirus and had no conflicts.
so you can even keep the antivirus parts on or just enable antivirus sweep.
lodore

 

Since you use it for on demand scanning only, what do you do to avoid having it load at startup? Do you use Sysinternals Autoruns to disable the registry keys, MSConfig (or some other program) to disable the exe files from loading, or do you manually delete them yourself?

Many of these programs, once started even for an on demand scan, will inject their startup files into the boot process all over again. They also place dll's in Windows Explorer (I've noticed that when running Autoruns).


Other questions:

Is there a menu option within the program to prevent it from loading at startup? Does it create a service that needs to be disabled or needs to be changed to manual?

 

hello quadrophonic,
to stop it starting at every startup first go to the options menu at the side
then the program tab, untick load spy sweeper at windows startup.

now you will need to follow the instuctions below to access the secret menu.
To see the secret menu, move the mouse over the Yellow Radar, then press Ctrl and Alt together, hold, and double-click the yellow radar.
once the secret menu is shown click on turn off "SPS"
SPS stands for self protective shields.
now you can change the startup type of the webroot spy sweeper engine service.
if you want to use spysweeper you must first manualy go to services and start the webroot spy sweeper engine service since it must be started for spysweeper to start and function.
then you can go to program files and start spysweeper.
lodore

 

Great info! Thanks! Are you going to take advantage of this offer, or are updates unlimited once you buy the software?

 

my license is valid until 2008.
its a yearly license fee.
i got 15months protection for the price of 12months.
i hope they fix the bugs that plauqe webroot software and make it lighter.
lodore