Spywaredoctor 6

[Guest]

[DarkButterfly]

This is a post that I wrote previously on this thread:

"I couldn't say better. Not to mention their policies.

In a recent test that I made it crashed the system. But it only crashed after I rebooted the machine. Before I rebooted the machine I performed a test with Spyware Doctor and as always it found something that others seemed to have missed. It also mentioned that BitDefender and Ewido also know the threat but with different names. I then performed the test with those two. Guess what? No infection found. Also checked with additional tools such as ad-aware 2008 pro, spybot, superantispyware, anti-virus (a few) and nothing was found either. Curious, no? Of course, if considering there was a real infection, you would then need to buy the product in order to kill the threat. 

As I said in another thread about PC Tools, if I was going to buy an anti-spyware product I would go for Sunbelt CounterSpy. "

Today in a crazy moment I decided to test Spyware Doctor 6 again but with the key of a friend just to find out it those findings our true, bogus or false positives.

It found again the same threat with 5 infections. The suppose threat is named Adware.Caishow (chinese based software that installs itself as a BHO). The same info says that it known as Adware.Dm by Ewido and Adware.Dm.F by BitDefender.

As I also mentioned before I did a scan with Ewido and Bitdefender and they found nothing. Today after seeing it still finds those "infections" I made a little research and these are some of the names as it is known by the different vendors:

Adware.CaiShow by PC Tools, Lavasoft Adware, Symantec, Sunbelt
AdWare.Win32.Dm.e by Kaspersky
Adware.Dm by Ewido
Adware.Dm.F by BitDefender

[triple x]

pc tools screws up the system! their firewall is pretty good! But their software is resource hungry and it slows everything down.... And I do not trust their definitions 100%..well maybe 99.9%... because they indeed come up with some infections that are most likely false positives or a trick in to buying their stuff....

NO! I say -------------------------------->

[Vettetech]

pc tools screws up the system! their firewall is pretty good! But their software is resource hungry and it slows everything down.... And I do not trust their definitions 100%..well maybe 99.9%... because they indeed come up with some infections that are most likely false positives or a trick in to buying their stuff....

NO! I say -------------------------------->

+1,+2,+3..............I have tried Spyware Doctor several times and every time I do same thing. It slows your pc way down. It is meant to be a real time scanner and trying to use it only on demand is almost impossible. Spyware Doctor also labels cookies as infections. Blah,Blah. Scan once a week with SAS and MBAM and you will have the same if not better of a level of protection as Spyware Doctor. All av's now a days have spyware protection built in so there is no need for a secondary stand alone real time spyware scanner.

[DarkButterfly]

Has anyone tried SD 6 and can provide some feedback?

Thanks
Josh

Well, it does not work out of the box. Why do I say that? Your system needs to be connected to the Internet to update Spyware Doctor before you can use it. If you don't have an internet connection or are not connected, then the application won't start and you won't be able to use it until you connect to the internet to update it.

I tested it on a virtual machine with Windows Vista SP1 + Eset NOD32 + Comodo BoClean + Comodo Firewall Pro v3 + Norton Antibot (I believe it was all I tested it with so far) and it did not tax the system as I would expect after seeing some people complaining about it.

Also, people have the chance to add addons by PC Tools to Spyware Doctor, such as Behavior Guard, which is based on ThreatFire engine. It's like having Spyware Doctor and ThreatFire in 1 application. People can download the addon, freely, from their forum under the ThreatFire section.

From now on (as soon as I can) I will test it's efficienceness to detect and prevent malware.   

[MaxDreamer]

Well, just to add my two cents here, I've been running Spyware Doctor with Anti-Virus Starter Edition (SDAV SE) 5.5 Free with ThreatFire (TF) 3.5 Free for a few days now, along with McAfee Security Center 8, on a new (and clean) Dell Inspiron 530 with Intel Core2 Duo E4600 CPU running at 2.4MHz, with 2GB RAM and Win Vista Home Premium. I enabled "Kernel Compatibility Mode" in SDAV so it could run in real-time and still get along with McAfee. So far, I've not noticed any appreciable drag on system performance, and barely a hit on boot-up time (5-10 secs). Also, have had no problems with SDAV, TF and McAfee all getting along. Seems to me that PC Tools, like Symantec since last year, might have worked to minimize the impact of their programs on overall system performance. Or, maybe I'm just running all this on a fast-enough machine that the performance hit is not humanly noticeable? In any case, SDAV 5.5 and TF 3.5 seem to me light and considerate in terms of system resource usage, and not the hogs that they perhaps were in earlier incarnations...

[DarkButterfly]

I needed to deactivate some security tools I was testing, so that I could test new ones without uninstalling the previous ones. After I reactivated them, I noticed that Spyware Doctor messed with the Comodo Firewall Pro v3 rules, and I had to allow or deny what ever I wanted once again. No other tool has ever done this. This means that everytime someone deactivates and reactivates Spyware Doctor and if using Comodo Firewall Pro, then they will need to reapply the rules. Well, not all of them, but still a few rules. When it shouldnt even mess with CFP.

[Vettetech]

No reason to use Spyware Doctor. Real time spyware scanners are a thing of the past. Most of today's top anti viruses have spyware protection built in. All you need is to scan once a week with SAS and MBAM on demand.

[donnyd]

I've been reading the post regarding this topic and I see phrases like "slows your system down" "resource hog"    " false positives" "screws your system up". Not everyone has the same machine. Some have more RAM then others, different processors e.g. Dule Core, Pentium, Centron and so on. If your PC configuration is limited you're not going to get the desired performance especially when adding additional processes. In this case security software. It's like trying to fit 10 pounds of S&!% in a 5 pound bag. Now the topic here is Spyware Doctor and I see a lot of negative comments about it. Some from you who have never even tried it. I have run Avira Premium with Guard active, BoClean, CFP V3 +D, Spyware Doctor V6 with IntelliGuard active and ThreatFire and have had no slow downs or seen any degradation with my PC. I took some advise from reading these post and removed ThreatFire because it was said that threatFire was putting a burden on D+. I also shutdown Spyware Doctor for a week  just to see if there was any type of noticable improvement and there was none outside of decreasing my bootup approx. 20 sec. I reactivated SpyD and all my security software to me works in harmony. Yes SpyD does flag some cookies as low level threats and not as viruses as mentioned in one post. To each his own. Whatever makes you feel secure. I know there are some that say "All you need is a good firewall and AV product" and that's all fine and good but there are others out there that want that added protection and I think from my experience  with SpyD it provides just that an extra layer of protection.

 
HP 820 Intel Pentium D Processor
2.8 GHz with 2 GB memory
Windows XP SP3           

[DarkButterfly]

I've been reading the post regarding this topic and I see phrases like "slows your system down" "resource hog"    " false positives" "screws your system up". Not everyone has the same machine. Some have more RAM then others, different processors e.g. Dule Core, Pentium, Centron and so on. If your PC configuration is limited you're not going to get the desired performance especially when adding additional processes. In this case security software. It's like trying to fit 10 pounds of S&!% in a 5 pound bag. Now the topic here is Spyware Doctor and I see a lot of negative comments about it. Some from you who have never even tried it. I have run Avira Premium with Guard active, BoClean, CFP V3 +D, Spyware Doctor V6 with IntelliGuard active and ThreatFire and have had no slow downs or seen any degradation with my PC. I took some advise from reading these post and removed ThreatFire because it was said that threatFire was putting a burden on D+. I also shutdown Spyware Doctor for a week  just to see if there was any type of noticable improvement and there was none outside of decreasing my bootup approx. 20 sec. I reactivated SpyD and all my security software to me works in harmony. Yes SpyD does flag some cookies as low level threats and not as viruses as mentioned in one post. To each his own. Whatever makes you feel secure. I know there are some that say "All you need is a good firewall and AV product" and that's all fine and good but there are others out there that want that added protection and I think from my experience  with SpyD it provides just that an extra layer of protection.

 
HP 820 Intel Pentium D Processor
2.8 GHz with 2 GB memory
Windows XP SP3           

It is one point of view. Valid as many others. But have you tried to deactivate it's services OFF (not active protection OFF) and then reactivate them? You might notice you have to reapply some Comodo Firewall Pro rules.

But, if not causing that many problems, why then did PC Tools roll back to version 5.5? They got aware of the (and I apologize my language) beta crap they released. Yes, beta. It seems that more and more vendors are releasing beta versions (to pay for) as being final releases and then things like that happen.

Also, at their web site there is no mention about minimal system requirements. I guess people would freak out if they knew that they would need alot resources?

Also, it is too easy for a security vendor to provide a "trial" (read a version that does detect threats, but does not remove them) and then tell people they got to pay to remove them. Everytime I test a new version it always detects something that all other antivirus+antispyware and stand alone antispywares seem not to find.

One uses what he/she wants, based of their experiences. If you feel fine with it, then stick with it. Others that don't like it and never liked it, won't. That's it.

[Vettetech]

Well my Dell WOW gaming machine with an Intel Duel core and 2 gigs of ram slows with Spyware Doctor then its not my machine. Its the program.

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