Spyware Doctor sucks!

[Smokin Joe]

I got this program as a freebe and thought it was so good I decided to purchase the 2. something or other version. Shortly after the purchase they went to 3.5 which took for ever to run and sent the processor temperatures out of sight. 4.0 is no better!!
PC World or some magazine rates it the best??????

Smoke

 

[John]

Spyware Doctor is one of the best anti-spyware tools on the market, has very few false positives, and a stellar detection rate. Yes it has had a few glitches along the way (locks the HDD so you can't CHKDSK comes to mind but a new revision fixed it) but nothing is perfect. If you think about it people have issues with all software vendors. If your pc is running slow maybe you have too many processes running and other malware running rampant on your pc.

I've been using SD for years and highly recommend it; in fact I have it listed in my guide. If you want to stick with a freebie I would go with a combination of Spybot, AVG/Ewido, and A-squared. You may also want to consider some of the other prevention methods listed in my sig. Good luck!

 

[Smokin Joe]

John, Thank for your reply. I can see you are much more knowledgable about spyware than myself. But I don't consider any program that raises the processor temperature 15 to 18 degrees and requires me to sit and click screens for up to 5/10 minutes to get it through it's process, a good program. I have had many contacts with PC Tools, uninstalled, reinstalled numerous times according to their instructions, to no avail.
No, I don't have a problem with my computer running slow, as I use other spyware programs such as AdAWAREse and etc.. Until my subscription tuns out,Spyware Doctor will kept inactive, until I have five or ten minutes to waste to run it! It most times only finds 1/2 items that the others don't find and they are not "High Level" problems anyway.

I was somewhat surprised the your guide didn't mention AdAware(that I saw anyway), as I consider it one of the better ones that I use.

Smoke

 

[John]

Hi I've never really measured the rise in cpu temp when running any malware removal tool, but in all honesty if you're seeing that kind of increase I think you have other issues that you may want to look at. When you run a chkdsk or defrag does the temp rise an equal amount? Check the How to guide: Memtest86+, Prime95, SP2004 and SuperPi and run Stress Prime on your rig for 5 minutes, then report back with the cpu temp.

I'm not sure what popups and prompts your referring to in Spyware Doctor because once you click on scan you don't have to do anything until it finishes. If it's not detecting many items that doesn't mean it has a lousy detection rate; it means you're a safe surfer.

FWIW I don't list Ad-Aware (AAW) in my guide because it is no longer worth mentioning IMHO. The detection rate is inferior to other programs therefore after you run the ones in my guide AAW will only detect a few cookies at best.

Maybe SD isn't for you which is fine because there are others available like Spy Sweeper (pay version) that are just as good.