Spybot and shutdown problem

When I had Spybot v1.2 installed it ran okay. Then with V1.3 & 1.4, it took an agonizingly long time to do scans, up to 90 minutes. Why are these 2 latest releases scanning my hard drive so slowly? Are there any fixes?

My system is running Windows 98 SE on an 800 MHz Pentium III processor with 128 MB 100 MHz SDRAM. I have EZ Aromor antivirus and firewall installed. My ISP is RoadRunner cable.

Also, lately when I do a shut down (START- SHUT DOWN - SHUT SOWN) I receive a pop-up error message saying that "VSMON caused an invalid page fault in module <unknown>" after which I can continue with the shutdown - or "This program caused an invalid page fault and will shut down" after which my system freezes and I have to do a power-down reboot. I have done a virus scan and spyware scans with AdAware SE Personal and SpyBot 1.4. Nothing really critical showed. Any suggestions about what might be causing this or what could be done about it?

PS - I'm not a real expert at understanding how to do things on the computer, so any instruction you care to give will have to be simple and direct - almost as if you were giving them to a child. Assume I know nothing!

Thanks in advance!

 

Well VSMON is usually associated with Zone Alarm. Do you have that installed as your firewall?

As for Spybot I use v1.3 on a Win98SE PC with no real problems. Check in the settings to see if its priority is set to Normal or higher (rather than the low end of things)

HTH

 

How do I go about checking the SpyBot settings? No I don't have Zone Alarm installed. I have ETrust EZ Firewall.

 

Agree entirely with Debodun, (welcome to MG, by the way). I have run various versions of Spybot S&D for ages now. I am using version 1.3.1TX and it is as slow as hell. Takes 45 minutes on my data. Has M$oft bought them out? . I will uninstall and download latest version from MG and see what happens. Will report back, probably in 24 hours. Anyone else having slow problems with Spybot? It appears as though teatimer.exe has vanished from this version, as well. Anyone else noticed this? Maybe my program is corrupted. As I said, I will try another install. Bazza

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I have close to the same setup as Debodun, win 98se, 700 cpu, p3 and 192 meg ram - running SpyBot ver. 1.3 , I do not have Teatimer installed, and have taken all updates offered, I am also on dial-up, tooo cheap to pay for cable, I experience "no" problems with SpyBot, just a "for what its worth"

 

You must have had ZoneAlarm installed at one stage.

Vsmon is a component of ZoneAlarm and is used to monitor traffic.

If you have removed ZoneAlarm, then there are still some remnants that are causing problems.

Try a good drive cleaner from the download section here.

As far as Spybot, I have 1.3.1TX, and don't have any problems with it, and teatimer functions perfectly.

How much free space do you have, and have you done a thorough Scandisk and defrag?

 

To get to the settings of Spybot. You need to open it in Advanced mode. In standard Mode click Mode on the top of the screen then select Advanced. OK the message that appears. Settings will be on the tab on the bottom left of the screen.

As for VSMON - if you are sure you have NEVER had ZoneAlarm then it may be THIS

 

Got the latest version yesterday

SpyBot-Search & Destroy 1.4 RC1

from http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=2471

Please excuse size of font, can't find out how to alter it.

Now have my teatimer.exe back.

Haven't run the latest version yet, to see if it still as slow as molasses. Bazza

 

Ran the latest version yesterday. It still takes well over 30 minutes on my small lot of data. I pity those with plenty of gigs of info that have to be checked by Spybot. I don't like to run programs of this kind without watching what is going on, especially if they take a long time. Thank M$ for Freecell. A game doesn't take long and I cam play and watch Spybot at the same time. I try to get as many cards out at one time to put in a degree of difficulty. Average over 40+ cards at once. Best is 49 at one time, more than once. Bazza

 

I have Win XP home and it has never taken more than 3-4 minutes for SpyBot S&D 1.3.1 TX (or other versions) to run.

I haven't had any types of updates for WEEKS and only saw that there were other versions when I was browsing here.

Is there any reason Spybot 1.3.1 TX didn't "tell" me when I clicked "search for updates" that there was a version update?

 

1.4 RC1 is a "Release Candidate" version, kinda like Alpha and Beta versions.

It's one step away from being a public release, so you won't be notified via Spybot that there is an update available until it is released.

As long as you have the latest detection rules dated 08-04-05 then it's not really a big deal.

If you want to be notified of Beta versions then go into settings and under "Web Updates" select "Display available Beta versions".

 

Thanks -- very helpful and I do have those detection rules (must have forgotten that I did get that update not that long ago).

 

Hi Pegg, long tome no hear/see. I downloaded and installed version 1.4RC the other day. As per Insomniac's reply I have just downloaded the latest updates. I will run Spybot as part of my housekeeping after I log off today and see if there is any difference in time taken to run it. Bazza

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It still takes forever to run. You can see the numbers incrementing one at a time.

How can they (the developers) not know how slow the new version is in operation.

Anyone else find how slow this latest version is?

Should I uninstall this version and go back to a 1.3 version? Bazza

 

Bear in mind that it is a Beta version (release candidate) and not the full public release.

I have 1.3.1 TX and the scans don't take anywhere near as long as what you are experiencing.

If you aren't happy with 1.4, then go back to one that you are happy or happier with.

My only criticism of Spybot is that the updates aren't frequent, but hey it's freeware, I'd still be happy if I paid for it.

 

I think CWS.SmartSearch.2 trojan may be the source of the problem. CWS is also extremely slow to run. All other programs on my laptop run at normal speeds, except Spybot and CWS. CWS bombs out when I try to run it after atime. Will go through the Hijack This sticky and see what it turns up. Bazza