[XP] What on earth is this?

[Malisk]

SUPERantispyware is well known and it is the best spyware scanner out there.

I must have been missing out. :|

Hmm, I'd rather not touch a software with such a ridiculous name with a ten foot pole though.

It sounds like some sort of crappy spyware. It tries too hard at sounding powerful.

Yes, same here... Tools like Spybot, Hijackthis, Ad-Aware all seem more well known to me.

[JRosenfeld]

I must have been missing out. :|

Hmm, I'd rather not touch a software with such a ridiculous name with a ten foot pole though.

It sounds like some sort of crappy spyware. It tries too hard at sounding powerful.

Yes, same here... Tools like Spybot, Hijackthis, Ad-Aware all seem more well known to me.

You are misinformed about Superantispyware. It is an excellent app, recommended in various antispyware fora, such as SpywareWarrior

http://www.spywarewarrior.com/rogue_anti-s...htm#trustworthy

The free version is on demand scanning only and does not run in the background, does nothing at all unless opened and set to scan (just like Spybot with teatimer and resident helper disabled). Perhaps the poster who complained about slow down and popups when deleting files had installed the paid for version, which has active monitoring (but which can be turned off).

Before you ask: I have absolutely no connection with the makers of any antispyware software, including superantispyware

Edited November 6, 2007 by JRosenfeld

[Zytan]

I agree that the 'SUPER' part of the name gives a bad feeling right off the bat. Then the title graphic worsens that feeling. The app itself doesn't look too bad, actually. It may very well be great at what it does, which is the most important thing... but, it was just unusable on my computer.

JRosenfeld, I installed the free version. I ran a scan. The scan stopped. Afterwards, every deletion on my computer was extraoridinarily slow. Something must have been left behind running, otherwise this makes no sense.

But... maybe it was Windows Defender, instead, since it was installed at the same time. But I've used that successfully in the past with no slow down issues. When i say slow, i mean slooooooooooow as in the dialog still hasn't disappeared after 10 minutes!!!! But, maybe, just on this one machine, Windows Defender was causing everything to slow down, since it does stay active in the background. But, it's so popular, I can't be the only person who has experienced this, if that were the case.

[JRosenfeld]

I agree that the 'SUPER' part of the name gives a bad feeling right off the bat. Then the title graphic worsens that feeling. The app itself doesn't look too bad, actually. It may very well be great at what it does, which is the most important thing... but, it was just unusable on my computer.

JRosenfeld, I installed the free version. I ran a scan. The scan stopped. Afterwards, every deletion on my computer was extraoridinarily slow. Something must have been left behind running, otherwise this makes no sense.

But... maybe it was Windows Defender, instead, since it was installed at the same time. But I've used that successfully in the past with no slow down issues. When i say slow, i mean slooooooooooow as in the dialog still hasn't disappeared after 10 minutes!!!! But, maybe, just on this one machine, Windows Defender was causing everything to slow down, since it does stay active in the background. But, it's so popular, I can't be the only person who has experienced this, if that were the case.

I'm sorry you had those problems. I can't reproduce them. When you say Superantispyware's scan stopped, do you mean it completed, or did it stop abnormally? Was it a complete scan with default settings, or other? You can view the scan log from one of the tabs in preferences.

I have Windows defender, with active monitoring on. I use the on demand scan of Superantispyware occasionally, Spybot (with Teatimer disabled) also occasionally and NAV 2008 about weekly (no scheduled sans, Ilike to decide myself when to do so). This is on XP SP2 all updates. I have not had any slow down or other issues after completing scans with any of these, nor noticed any conflict between them (obviously I only scan with one or other at any one time). The only popups I occasionally get are from Windows Defender active monitoring, e.g. if I make changes to the HOSTS file, or run some app it does not know about (but these can be excluded from its warnings).

If you are interested in pursuing the matter, Superantispyware has a users' forum, in which the app's developer is quick to help with problems.

http://forums.superantispyware.com/index.php

[Zytan]

Superantispyware's scan stopped properly, and found nothing on my computer, just like the rest of the programs didn't find anything. I only noticed the slow dialogs due to deletions much later, when nothing else was running. I am Running WinXp Home SP2 with all updates.

I am going to reinstall Superantispyware, just because it's unfair of me to criticise it when there was another app (Windows Defender) installed at the same time, since I don't know who is the culprit. I'll report back with my findings.

Thanks for the forum link.

[Zytan]

I re-installed SuperAntiSpyware, ran a scan, and the deletion delay no longer occurs.

I then re-installed Windows Defender, ran a scan, and the deletion delay no longer occurs.

I now have the exact same system running as before, and the problem has not been reproduced. I have process explorer, and can verify that nothing else fishy is or was going on, so I am at a lost for what was happening. Perhaps it only occurred after a reboot. I'll continue using my computer like this for a few days, just to be absolutely sure that I haven't missed anything I did the first time around.

[JRosenfeld]

That's good news. Let's hope it stays that way.

It is a good idea to have several antimalware scanning apps available, as often, what one doesn't find another will.

[Zytan]

I have since rebooted, and deleted a ton of files, and there is no delay in deletion whatsoever.

Why did it happen before? Why did it only occur after installing SUPERAntiSpyware and Windows Defender? I have no idea. My system has never had delay issues like this before. It's my work machine, and I keep it clean. The most crazy I've been installing stuff on it is in the past few days installing every AV and A-spyware program I could find to eliminate this worm thing that turned out to be nothing, which I still don't know where it came from.

I retract my statements about SUPERAntiSpyware being bad, since I have no conclusive evidence that suggests it is.

[Panacik]

That's good news. Let's hope it stays that way.

It is a good idea to have several antimalware scanning apps available, as often, what one doesn't find another will.

You are incorrect. Regardless of weather they load at startup or not, it is not a good idea to have more than one installed and run often.

As for the software you are trying to push on to the forum, until people have trialled it and it is as well known and trusted as the other antispywares mentioned in the thread, then i will not suggest people use it at all.

Please stop mis-informing people that it is good to have more than one scanner installed, it simply is not correct.

[Zytan]

I have to agree that it is quite improper to state SUPERAntiSpyware is well known and trusted, since it simply is not by large amount of people. This doesn't mean it's not a great program, it just doesn't have that distinction of being well trusted, yet.

I would think that it's bad to have multiple anti-spyware (or anti-virus) programs that run in real-time at the same time, since they are all battling each other to check the files in use. But, I don't see anything wrong with having multiple anti-spyware (or anti-virus) programs that are not active, like the free version of Ad-Aware, and are run only when explicitly instructed. Of course, these don't offer the best of protection, which is really bad when you're talking about self-replicating viruses, but it's really not all that bad for spyware, since when it becomes an annoyance, you can run the app and have it removed. The free version of Ad-Aware, with no real-time protection, has always been fine for me.