SD 6.0.1.440 wiping my HDD

[davidg202]

Please can PC Tools developers investigate the following issue.

- My operating system is Windows Vista Home Premium x64, Service Pack 1 with no other updates.
- This issue occurs regardless of Spyware Doctor's settings (or whether it has anti-virus enabled or not). SD version is 6.0.1.440.

Whenever I have the above mentioned version of Spyware Doctor installed (even with its default settings), whenver I run certain installers, notably for Winamp and VLC Media Player (I've tried several versions including VLC 0.9.6 (http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/vlc/0.9.6/win32/vlc-0.9.6-win32.exe)), my entire C: drive gets wiped of almost everything. The entire contents of C:\Users\David get deleted, as does everything that's capable of being deleted in C:\Windows, C:\Program Files, and C:\Program Files (x86). All other folders and files in the root C: drive are also deleted. The disk gets wiped the moment I try to run the installer, and before any of the GUI appear.

As I said above, I had Vista SP1 installed, and without SD installed, they run fine. As soon as I install SD and run them, the HDD gets wiped.

I have the same version of Spyware Doctor running fine on my Vista Home Premium 32-bit SP1 laptop, so it would seem to be the 64-bit element that's causing the problem.


Please can you investigate.

Thanks,
David.


PS: It also cost me £45.49 to buy a new hard drive to install Windows onto, in the hope I can run some file recovery software to recover the deleted data off my previous drive - it had the only copy of 250GB of irreplaceable data on it that I'd recovered from another failed HDD just the day before!

[AChen]

Hi David,

Many thanks for the info. We managed to recreate the problem and this has been escalated for a fix :)

[davidg202]

Thanks, keep me posted when you get it fixed :)

[Extol]

Thats a scary bug.

I may have to buy another usb HDD for laptops to be backed up.

[haapy]

Backups are the way of life these days.

Get macrium free for image backup and comodo free for data backup and you will be good to go.

[AChen]

Thanks, keep me posted when you get it fixed :)

A fix is available via the Smart Updates (for 64 bit Vista) :D

[mkstretch]

Wow! I just found this thread, and I have been having all my programs get deleted when I try to install new software and havd no idea what it was. David when you went to install new software did it not install then give you an error message then delete all your programs. This has happeded several about 10 times to me.

[davidg202]

Wow! I just found this thread, and I have been having all my programs get deleted when I try to install new software and havd no idea what it was. David when you went to install new software did it not install then give you an error message then delete all your programs. This has happeded several about 10 times to me.
No, I just double-clicked the installer file, clicked the "Run" button on the Windows security prompt, and it immediately deleted all my data. Then when it had deleted everything, the program continued to install normally and run fine, although in the case of VLC it wouldn't play anything because all the system codecs had been wiped.


Has the installer file from the Spyware Doctor website been updated as well, in case anyone installs it and tries installing something else before they get the update?

[KRWalker]

Yes. I'm getting ready to install SpyDoc .440 onto my system, and was shocked when I read this thread, but glad to see a fix is available now. I'm also inquiring if this new update is included in the current download link for SpyDoc at My Account, or is there an update version number we would need to see in Smart Update to make sure we've downloaded it? Thanks!!

[mkstretch]

No, I just double-clicked the installer file, clicked the "Run" button on the Windows security prompt, and it immediately deleted all my data. Then when it had deleted everything, the program continued to install normally and run fine, although in the case of VLC it wouldn't play anything because all the system codecs had been wiped.


Has the installer file from the Spyware Doctor website been updated as well, in case anyone installs it and tries installing something else before they get the update?
O ok so it was when installing SD. It happened when I was installing apps like Picasa 3.

[davidg202]

It was when installing apps.

[whatever]

Hi David,

Many thanks for the info. We managed to recreate the problem and this has been escalated for a fix :)

This happened to me twice - I originally thought that the VLC download somehow got poisoned with a particularly unpleasant virus - it never occurred to me that my antivirus product might have a bug in it that would DELETE EVERYTHING ON MY HARD DISK!

And on top of that, support thinks an issue like this is worth a smiley face - I don't find it particularly funny... if I didn't back up regularly I don't think I would find it funny at all. It also STILL has not been fixed - I'm on 6.0.1.440 and there are no automatic updates available.

Along with the fact that if I have Spyware Doctor running the Giganews Accelerator (local usenet proxy which adds header compression / SSL support - download from giganews.com) won't even launch - despite me adding the executable to the global exceptions list - makes this pretty much an unusable product for me... Amazingly, if you disable SD, run Giganews Accelerator, and then re-enable SD, the program works fine.

Oh and the prompt to run Intelliscan on every boot up if you have 64 bit Vista is pretty annoying too.

Amazingly all these are known issues - I would think the first at least would warrant an emergency patch say around AT ONCE... or at least a mail to all users warning them of the issue. It's been 10 days since support acknowledged the problem! The thread states that there is a fix in Smart Update - that's certainly not the case for me, unless they fixed it and didn't update the software version number, which would be a pretty crappy thing to do. Funnily enough, it's not something I particularly feel like testing!

I think I want a refund. As far as I can tell all this software is good at is detecting advertising cookies...

Only posting to thank the OP for taking the time to put this information out there and hopefully save some people trashing their hard drives more than a couple of times...

[davidg202]

The SD version number didn't change, and yes there should be an update to fix it available (it's categorised under Product Updates) as it's now working fine on my PC, bar the IntelliScan prompt at every boot.

I also noticed Anthony neglected to note the fact I was left out of pocket by the bug when I had to buy a new hard drive to recover all the stuff SD wiped, when it wasn't my fault. I think the UK does have a law that would allow me to claim back the cost from PCT but I don't yet know what it is.

For me, SD is the best anti-spyware software out there, and I would never get rid of it even though every new release of it seems to introduce more bugs than it fixes. Ad-Aware, Spybot, A-Squared etc don't even come near the detection rate of SD.

[TrDo]

Sorry to tell you guys..but SD is not designed to run on 64-bit systems..PCTools don't actually advertize this fact...

But if you search the web..you'll find this to be true..from experts..

TrDo.

[davidg202]

It clearly says on the SD download page that it works with Vista 64-bit. I even participated in running the BETA of it around Dec 2008 - Feb 2009 (before I temporarily switched to XP), which worked near-perfectly.

http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/9181/sddlpage.jpg

[reboot_dude]

it has made sure it has got rid of all spyware or viruses...shame it deleted your data though:mad:

[TrDo]

Hi davidg202,

you said: "It clearly says on the SD download page that it works with Vista 64-bit. I even participated in running the BETA of it around Dec 2008 - Feb 2009 (before I temporarily switched to XP), which worked near-perfectly".

Check this out..http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2281594,00.asp

TrDo.

[InvisibleMan]

TrDo,

The PC Magazine article and reader's comments you refer to were written over one year ago in March and April, 2008.

It is now April, 2009. A lot has happened within the past year, including PC Tools Spyware Doctor now being viable on Vista 64-bit systems.

I also heard there is a new President in the U.S., too. :D

Best wishes.

[TrDo]

TrDo,

The PC Magazine article and reader's comments you refer to were written over one year ago in March and April, 2008.

It is now April, 2009. A lot has happened within the past year, including PC Tools Spyware Doctor now being viable on Vista 64 bit systems.

I also heard there is a new President in the U.S., too. :D

Best wishes.


Yes, I understand...but I'm quite sure that the people whose HDD were destroyed by a "bug"--lol--...don't really share your theory of relativity and time...and I'm certain that most probably neither your sense of humour...

All the best,

TrDo.

[InvisibleMan]

TrDo,

I do feel pain for davidg202's experience. It must be frustrating to be the one who discovers such a malfunction between services and applications, to then find out that the PC Tools lab can replicate it, too.

Let's hope the PC Tools fix as reported by Anthony Chen is good.

Regarding my sense of humor...I'm probably too old for that to change, but I'll keep it in mind.

[ohso]

TrDo wrote:
> I'm quite sure that the people whose HDD were destroyed by a "bug" --lol--...don't really share your theory of relativity and time.

Then they would be severely logic-challenged.

The relevant words from the link you posted weren't written by PC Magazine.
Nor by PCT!
It was a _comment_ (!) by some anonymous poster!
Nearly a year ago!
To cite that as a technical reference to support your position is just ... unbelievable.

Well .. unless you work for a SD competitor.

> if you search the web..you'll find this to be true..from experts

And what experts would that be?

[reboot_dude]

thats what i love about the internets . you can find anything you want and always be right..your just unhappy 'coz you have closed you mind off to the endless possibilities

[The PIT]

The SD version number didn't change, and yes there should be an update to fix it available (it's categorised under Product Updates) as it's now working fine on my PC, bar the IntelliScan prompt at every boot.

I also noticed Anthony neglected to note the fact I was left out of pocket by the bug when I had to buy a new hard drive to recover all the stuff SD wiped, when it wasn't my fault. I think the UK does have a law that would allow me to claim back the cost from PCT but I don't yet know what it is.

For me, SD is the best anti-spyware software out there, and I would never get rid of it even though every new release of it seems to introduce more bugs than it fixes. Ad-Aware, Spybot, A-Squared etc don't even come near the detection rate of SD.

Maybe not your fault that the bug wiped your drive but your fault you never bothered doing backups.

At least you got a backup drive now and lessoned learned hopefully.

[davidg202]

As I said earlier, I did have a backup drive before, however it had failed a couple of days earlier and the stuff I'd recovered from it was on my C: drive along with everything else. SD wiped the whole lot.

[Schipperke]

When the web site asks for a reason you do not want to be automatically billed when you subscription expires, put a link to this thread. :rolleyes:

[Berserker]

This happened to me about a month ago when I was downloading an update to Picasa. I had to recover my hard drive. How do I know if I'm protected now? (Sorry for the neophyte type of question.)