Spyware Doctor using 100% of CPU

[sanitystream]

I just bought Spyware Doctor and noticed it's using 100% of the CPU all the time. Specifically, it's the process "pctssvc.exe".

Is this normal?

[Reodor]

There is no problem normally to run on a low spec comp, providing You do not run Vista!
I just loaded the SDAV Beta on my Dell 3100 with 512Ram. However, keep no other security apps running, (SD + one AV only).
Keep Your comp clean from garbage, run CCleaner daily!
Minimize running programs. There are no need to keep everything running which You do not need at the moment. SD keeps checking running processes, keep them at minimum.

[GoneToPlaid]

Right click My Computer and select Properties. Then click on the Advanced tab. Under Advanced, click on the Settings button for Performance. This will open a new window titled Performance Options. In Performance Options click on Advanced and then click on Change under Virtual Memory. This opens a new window titled Virtual Memory. Click the Custom size: radio button and make sure that the Initial size (MB): is set to:

-- at least 1440 if you have 1GB of ram.
-- at least 1950 if you have 512K of ram.

Set the Maximum size (MB): to nearly double or double the value you set for the Initial size (MB). Then click Set to apply your custom settings. Then click OK to close each of the popup windows.

The reason for all this is that Spyware Doctor likes to have plenty of available memory so that it can truly monitor your computer in real time in order to stop threats dead in their tracks.

Finally, check that you don't have two or more other programs which also are performing automatic malware and antivirus scans at the same time. For example, if your antivirus program scans all emails and if you also use ZoneAlarm, turn off all email scanning in ZoneAlarm. If your antivirus program also provides browser protection features, you might want to turn this particular feature off since Spyware Doctor does the same thing. In other words, it boils down to stopping the battle between different software programs which are trying to accomplish the same thing at once.

Once you get your settings set right to minimize battles, reboot and wait for hard drive activity to settle down to its normal intermittently blinking state, and then check CPU usage. You should note that CPU usage drops down to a few percent after approximately anywhere from 10 seconds to 30 seconds of not doing anything on your computer.

[sanitystream]

Finally, check that you don't have two or more other programs which also are performing automatic malware and antivirus scans at the same time. For example, if your antivirus program scans all emails and if you also use ZoneAlarm, turn off all email scanning in ZoneAlarm. If your antivirus program also provides browser protection features, you might want to turn this particular feature off since Spyware Doctor does the same thing. In other words, it boils down to stopping the battle between different software programs which are trying to accomplish the same thing at once.




Thanks a bunch for all the tips.

I also run McAfee Virus Scan Plus at the same time as Spyware Doctor. I guess McAfee also looks for spyware and scans e-mail. Should I tell McAfee to stop doing that and just look for viruses?

[haapy]

Gonetoplaid has sound advice. Two mail scanners are not good. Choose one.

Look for other overlapping functions between McAfee and SD.

[illumi]

I had this same problem and tried many different solutions with little change. I disabled the Spyware Doctor cookie guard in the intelliguard settings on a hunch and it fixed the problem completely. Right now my computer is hovering between 0 and 5% usage. Before it was almost constantly at 100%.

[AChen]

I had this same problem and tried many different solutions with little change. I disabled the Spyware Doctor cookie guard in the intelliguard settings on a hunch and it fixed the problem completely. Right now my computer is hovering between 0 and 5% usage. Before it was almost constantly at 100%.

It looks like Cookie Guard is constantly scanning for cookies on your PC, hence using up CPU. Do you have any other security programs installed? Also, if you clear up the temporary internet files, does this problem still occur with Cookie Guard enabled? We will try to recreate this once we receive some additional info.

[exn01]

OK, I been following the threads for a while now, as I have the exact same issue with pctssvc.exe hogging all CPU constantly (I have open thread that has not been resolved).

I have now disabled the Cookie Guard, and things are good, but I am concerned that Cookie Guard is not enabled, as I see a lot of cookies detected in the history log when it is enabled.

I only have SD+AV (6.0.0.386), and I have PCTools Firewall and Threatfire - no other active anti anything running.

If there is any solution or advice for this, it would be very very appreciated. I have just renewed my license (have had PCTools for a long time), and the pctssvc.exe issue has been a major issue, so much that I have considered changing to something else.

[Reodor]

Give Firefox a try and set it to 'delete all' when closing. That way You will be dragging along a minimum of cookies not to forget have the comp a bit cleaner.

[AChen]

Illumi, do you have any other security software installed?
Exn01, thanks for the info. I have escalated this issue to be investigated. I will try to recreate the problem.

[exn01]

I regularly run the 'Clear Private Data' in Firefox, but on closer examination it did not have 'Cookies' ticked, so there were a lot of cookies there.

I have now removed all cookies from my laptop, from IE and Firefox, and have reactivated Cookie Guard, and surprisingly everything seems to have settled down.

Could the fact that there were a lot of cookies been the reason for the high utilization? Or, is it possible that there might have been a cookie that could have caused pctssvc to go haywire?

I'll continue to monitor for a few days, and see how it goes...

[Reodor]

No surprise to me.
Have my comps set to clear cookies when closing FF as well as clear all personal data.
In addition I run CCleaner almost every day and have it set at 'maximum', all options ticked off.

Let us hope Your system speed keeps improving!

[AChen]

I regularly run the 'Clear Private Data' in Firefox, but on closer examination it did not have 'Cookies' ticked, so there were a lot of cookies there.

I have now removed all cookies from my laptop, from IE and Firefox, and have reactivated Cookie Guard, and surprisingly everything seems to have settled down.

Could the fact that there were a lot of cookies been the reason for the high utilization? Or, is it possible that there might have been a cookie that could have caused pctssvc to go haywire?

I'll continue to monitor for a few days, and see how it goes...

Yes this would be the reason why Cookie Guard is utilizing alot of the CPU as it is constantly scanning for cookies and if you have a very large amount, it requires more work.

**Update:
We did some further testing on this scenario, but could not recreate the problem. The CPU usage does increase but does not max out. We'll continue to look into this.

[GoneToPlaid]

I regularly run the 'Clear Private Data' in Firefox, but on closer examination it did not have 'Cookies' ticked, so there were a lot of cookies there.

I have now removed all cookies from my laptop, from IE and Firefox, and have reactivated Cookie Guard, and surprisingly everything seems to have settled down.

Could the fact that there were a lot of cookies been the reason for the high utilization? Or, is it possible that there might have been a cookie that could have caused pctssvc to go haywire?

I'll continue to monitor for a few days, and see how it goes...

Regardless of the number of cookies you have, if you have your computer's virtual memory set high enough as described in my earlier post in this thread, then SD's CPU usage should drop off to under 5% after a minute or so of non-user activity on your computer. If not, then some other process from a virus program or firewall is interfering with SD. At least this is what I have figured out after a few months now of using SD.

[exn01]

Regardless of the number of cookies you have, if you have your computer's virtual memory set high enough as described in my earlier post in this thread, then SD's CPU usage should drop off to under 5% after a minute or so of non-user activity on your computer. If not, then some other process from a virus program or firewall is interfering with SD. At least this is what I have figured out after a few months now of using SD.

I did ensure that the page file was set to min of 1536 (1024 * 1.5) and the max set to 3072 (1536 * 2). It didn't make any difference after a reboot. After I deleted all the cookies from FF and IE, things went back to 'normal', low CPU utilisation, and my disk stopped being hammered. AChen says they were unable to recreate the issue, so I really wonder now if there might have been a cookie there that might have caused SD to go haywire? Unfortunately I did not take a backup of the cookies before deleting, so we'll probably never know. In the meantime, instead of deleting cookies after a session, I'll leave it as-is, and see if after a while the symptoms return or not.

Thanks all for the advice and suggestions....

[Extol]

Give your Virtual memory a static set amount. If 1gig give 2000mb if 2gigs give 3000mb.With the size of todays drives who cares if VM uses 5gigs...really.
Also, set your page file on a different drive than C...not different partition on same drive...a different drive all together if possible.The fastest drive would be best.defrag the drive taking on the page file (Virtual memory) before moving over, then defrag your c drive after the move to reset everything.

Keeping a non static page file sure does fragment the drive quite a bit.Remember to always CHKDSK before a defrag and clean usless files with CCleaner or whatever app you use.

Also under that advanced tab you can set priority to programs rather than background services.


There are quite a few performance tweaks XP does well from and tweakxp.com has quite a bit.


Anyways, as I mentioned in another post I had no problem for years but when I had to reinstall due to some other problems thats when I noticed the problem.Cookie guard was already disabled as I never use it and think it should be chucked out of SD....but, thats me.

I have gotten things down to lower percentage of use and it doesnt hang longer than it should. I notice it doing more on sites with lots of links and on lots of rar downloads.

I also have behavior guard which I see is threatfire and has its own threatfire service but somhow it is tied to pctsSvc so I know why I have added cpu usage now where as my previous install of SD with AV had not had behavior guard at all.

Also one more off topic thing, I cannot download browser defender toolbar...I'd like to see if that will bring my cpu usage back to 100% which it did before causing me to uninstall.

Also notice the page faults pctsSvc gets high numbers in millions as does peak working set under memory and i/o is quite high...I understand everything but the Page faults...thats not nessacary.

thank you.

[fttwman]

I removed all my cookies from both my browsers and pctssvc cpu usage declined to what a "normal" service should be. I then brought up yahoo home page and cpu usage spiked up to 50-100. I have been running SD for quiet some time and have this has not been an issue. Only recently has this become an issue. I am running 6.0.0.386. maybe you can track any changes made to the software been this and prior versions

[GoneToPlaid]

I am beginning to think that the problem is that SD hooks into various processes at the same time during bootup as various other anti-virus and firewall programs do. And thus the "battle" between these programs ensues. I also think that this is why occasionally pctsTray throws multiple error messages about instructions at specific addresses not being able to be read. Just yesterday this happened to me. I decided to simply click "Okay" or whatever the button name was for these eight or so popups and then pctsTray loaded (restarted). The important thing is that when pctsTray restarted itself after my AV and firewall software was loaded, then Spyware Doctor was fast as a bullet and didn't slow down the OS.

I guess that what I am trying to say is that SD needs to be smart enough to ensure that it loads after any AV and firewall software during bootup. I figure that if stuff gets past the AV and firewall software, then obviously its time for SD to handle the potential malware problem. Or maybe it needs to be the other way around in order for SD to protect the AV and firewall software???

[plumgas]

I have been putting up with spyware hogging my resources through verssion 5 & 6 . Scanning makes my pc unusable.

As it's subscription renewal time I have deceided to say "good bye spyware doctor". Have downloaded NOD32 & its beautiful. My pc is fast again & scanning does not stop the normal functions.

[skids]

A few versions ago the pcts.Tray.exe was known to constantly run a high cpu % process. Then it was fixed in the last version prior to .440. Well I installed the update to v6.0.1.440 and it is back again, constantly running 25% on my Dell E510 . Strangely it doesn't do the same on my Inspirion laptop E1705. Both have same amount of RAm and other software. Both have recommended page file settings for max/min as recommended on this forum (1GB ram, 1500 and 3000 min/max pfile)

[c_edge]

A few versions ago the pcts.Tray.exe was known to constantly run a high cpu % process. Then it was fixed in the last version prior to .440. Well I installed the update to v6.0.1.440 and it is back again, constantly running 25% on my Dell E510 . Strangely it doesn't do the same on my Inspirion laptop E1705. Both have same amount of RAm and other software. Both have recommended page file settings for max/min as recommended on this forum (1GB ram, 1500 and 3000 min/max pfile)

Do you have any major software differences between the 2 pc's? Try also disabling the guards to see if this does anything and clear out the cookies on the PC as this has helped someone because the cookie guard was constantly scanning slowing down the PC.

c_edge

[jamesbraken]

It uses only when you start your computer because it checks automatically all the drive data or software that time it shows the 100% uses after that it normally don't.

[skids]

Wait I am momentarily a member of the house banking committee. I had downloaded v.440 on both computers but not installed on the desktop apparently or didn't notice it failed to install.

v389 (? the previous 3xx one) was still loaded and that was hogging the cpu resources. with the new .440 it's back to normal.

I will find a member of the insurance industry to blame and get back to you with how this happened and who should get their bonus illegally revoked... um I mean confiscated, no wait, I mean 100% taxed.