Slowed to a Crawl

[DBissett]

After putting up with my computer running at a crawl ever since installing Spyware Doctor I uninstalled it yesterday and everything is back to normal. It looks like something is wrong with the program, perhaps a serious memory leak. I repeatedly exited the program but that never did much good. Every mouse click was affected and the machine seemed to be mired in quicksand all the time. Even attempts to shutdown the computer were often unsuccessful and very very very slow. So what gives? This is supposed to be a king of the hill program but it mostly just interfered with everything I tried to do on the computer once it was installed. Oh, and this not to mention that loading it takes completely forever!

Dave

[ejr]

After putting up with my computer running at a crawl ever since installing Spyware Doctor I uninstalled it yesterday and everything is back to normal. It looks like something is wrong with the program, perhaps a serious memory leak. I repeatedly exited the program but that never did much good. Every mouse click was affected and the machine seemed to be mired in quicksand all the time. Even attempts to shutdown the computer were often unsuccessful and very very very slow. So what gives? This is supposed to be a king of the hill program but it mostly just interfered with everything I tried to do on the computer once it was installed. Oh, and this not to mention that loading it takes completely forever!

Dave

It could be that Spyware Doctor had a conflict with another piece of software on your PC. What firewall? Antivirus? Other Spywae Programs are using?

[DBissett]

Windows firewall, Avast antivirus, AdAwareSE w/Ad-Watch.

[ejr]

Windows firewall, Avast antivirus, AdAwareSE w/Ad-Watch.

Shouldn't be any conflicts there. Although AVAST does have a Web Filter that could possibly conflict with the Active protection in SD.

In any case, if you can't get SD to work on your System, the following programs are also excellent:

Spysweeper and Counterspy are also excellent. If you want free options, AVG Antispyware, Superantispoyware, and Spyware Terminator are all good.

SD in my opinion is the best though.

[DBissett]

Can you tell me what these programs do that Ad-Aware w/Ad-Watch doesn't do?

[ejr]

Can you tell me what these programs do that Ad-Aware w/Ad-Watch doesn't do?


I am not familiar with Ad-watch. But I am familiar with adaware. There is no comparison really.

Spysweeper, Spyware Doctor, CounterSpy and Spyware Terminator all have active protections that prevent spyware from being installed in the first place. The free version of adaware does not. You have to upgrade adaware to the professional version to get this.

On top of that, Spysweeper, Spyware Doctor, and Counterspy all detect and remove a much higher percentage of spyware than does adaware.

Spyware Terminator is free, comes with active protection, and also comes with HIPS (Host Intrusion Prevention System). This is very advanced for a free program. However, it is still in developmental stages and the scanner is not as the greatetst.

[snooze]

After putting up with my computer running at a crawl ever since installing Spyware Doctor I uninstalled it yesterday and everything is back to normal. It looks like something is wrong with the program, perhaps a serious memory leak. I repeatedly exited the program but that never did much good. Every mouse click was affected and the machine seemed to be mired in quicksand all the time. Even attempts to shutdown the computer were often unsuccessful and very very very slow. So what gives? This is supposed to be a king of the hill program but it mostly just interfered with everything I tried to do on the computer once it was installed. Oh, and this not to mention that loading it takes completely forever!

Dave

I did notice this as well, although I have not yet uninstalled the program since it does help in preventing any malwares around. But yeah, the program does make the system crawl. Also, when I look at it in the Task Manager, I notice that "swdoctor.exe" (Spyware Doctor) gobbles up a lot of memory, whenever I close the program and goes back to the taskbar swdoctor.exe starts gobbling up memory, it'll go from 3000k to about 60000k :mad: , whic is totally ridiculous. I don't know whether it's having some memory leak or memory not being purged or released at all after being used making my system totally slow. I hope they patch this thing up.

Oh another thing, If you guys are using Windows 2000, and if you turn on the Immunizer On, you'll notice that the icon on the top left corner of your folders disappears for some unknown reason at all. I have contacted Tech. Support on this, and have provided some ScreenShots on what's going on and they're looking into it.


snooze

[sourceminer]

I have seen several computers with SpyDr installed where this same thing happens, I have just made it a policy that after cleaning is done. I remove the program. What is the deal here? Why is Spy Dr using so much memory and CPU! Auto Scans are turned off, and same with realtime stuff yet it still supprises me that the program still uses so much system resources.

[LiquidAir]

Heres a thought, get more ram. If you have only 512meg of ram then go into the bank like the highroller you are and spend the whole whopping 70 bucks it'll cost for another 512 and do yourself a favour.

Another reason it's running slow if u have little ram is how many progs do you have running in the background? And how many you DONT know about running in the background? ie hidden progs using mem useage?

Swdoctor is running absolutely fine at 6000k on my pc and everyone elses i know, and if u have at least a gig of ram you'll NEVER notice its running unless its doing a scheduled scan, and if you do, obviously theres something wrong with your ram, progs in the background or other things on your pc.

[snooze]

RAM? I already have 1GB of RAM, are you kidding? more than enough to run my PC. It's SD that has problems, and I think due to memory leaks that is not being released at all. It just gobbles up memory whenever I close it back to the System Tray making my browser totally slow and it crawls up my other programs especially whenever I open them up. SD will start from 3000k to about 80000K and more...now tell me if that's ok cause I don't think it is. That totally is a memory waste my friend.

snooze

[Pritam]

Spyware Doctor utilizes many tools to provide real time protection from potential threats. Depending on your computer specifications and applications; these tools may affect your system performance.

This is resolved with SD version 5.0 which will be released soon.

Given that Spyware Doctor's OnGuard tools may affect your system performance, it may be necessary to evaluate the purpose of each tool to decide which tools should be left ON and which tools you can leave OFF depending on your needs.

I have therefore provided an explanation of each tool:

1. Exploit Guard - Exploit Guard provides real-time protection against exploits, which are malicious applications and other files that make use of security flaws or vulnerabilities to perform malicious activities. Exploit Guard blocks the running of malicious code hidden within a Windows Metafile (WMF) graphics file when it is displayed.Therefore, if you are already using WinXP SP2, Microsoft has included it on April/May IE updates.

2. Process Guard - Process Guard provides real-time protection against malicious programs by preventing them from running before they have a chance to damage or compromise your computer. If you are familiar with the programs and applications running on your PC and are confident that they are not malicious, Process Guard may not be required to be ON.

3. Site Guard - As you browse the Internet, Site Guard prevents access to suspected malicious web sites, which may be masquerading as legitimate business or eCommerce sites designed to steal your personal information or distribute spyware.

Site Guard is designed for those with little experience on the Internet and may fall prey to a deceptive advertisement taking them to a malicious site.

4. IM Guard - IM Guard monitors conversations in MSN Messenger or Windows Messenger for any potentially malicious URLs received from any participants in the conversation.
Such URLs can lead to phishing sites or sites which attempt to exploit your web browser.

If you are not using MSN Messenger or Windows Messenger, you will not need to use this tool.

[gwoods]

I just joined the Forum. Does PCTools have any company people monitor the forums. It appears we have a lot of users answering questions based on their experiences with their own computers and how a program works for them. While this makes for interesting reading it also seems to generate a lot of confusion. Since no one knows how the other computer is configured.

[Amaspain]

4. IM Guard - IM Guard monitors conversations in MSN Messenger or Windows Messenger for any potentially malicious URLs received from any participants in the conversation.
Such URLs can lead to phishing sites or sites which attempt to exploit your web browser.

If you are not using MSN Messenger or Windows Messenger, you will not need to use this tool.

Do not use the IM Guard with Skype as Spyware Doctor will update Skype with Adware. SD will place an advert against your name. SD should be protecting us against this...

[RChang]

I am glad to see others are having the same issue -- I've been having this issue for the 2 years that I have been using Spyware Dr. For me it is more of a CPU usage issue. The program starts using 100% CPU and I cannot get anything done until that abates or I kill the Spyware Dr. process.

I've been just dealing with it but today it got really bad. I had to kill the program 3 times just to be able to get any other programs to load (so I could do work).

Another thing I noticed is that the last two days the program has been hanging after it does its daily update. I've come back to my PC in the morning and find the Spyware Dr. screen stuck at the "Spyware Dr. Update is completed. Press Finish to continue." However, the Finish button is greyed out.

I have 1.5GB of RAM so it is not an issue with the amount of RAM on my PC.

The CPU issue gave me great pause this year when my renewal date was upon me. However, I bit the bullet since I hoped the issue would be resolved since I do like the product (other than that).

-Rich

[c_edge]

hi RChang,

have you tried Pritams suggestion?

It could be an SD tool causing this problem.

Constant scanning from a particular tool using most of CPU. As a workaround, you could disable this tool.

"This is resolved with SD version 5.0 which will be released soon"

c_edge

[wrongworld]

I am glad to see others are having the same issue -- I've been having this issue for the 2 years that I have been using Spyware Dr. [...]
-Rich

Ditto for me. Same amount of RAM, same behaviour. If this promised version 5 will not fix ONCE FOR ALL the resource hog problem, I'll not renew the subscription.

Andrea