Your story sounds relly weird to me. Is it really the free software "Spybot - Search & Destroy 1.3" that you've downloaded? It can be found here: http://www.safer-networking.org/

I use it regularly and I've never had any pop-ups asking me to pay for a clean-up. You can donate if you want to but as far as I know there is no "greed" involved in this product. Maybe it's one of the "bots" left on your 'puter thats doing this. But then again - Spybot should be able to clean out everything.

A long time ago I had a "bot" called "New.net" on my 'puter that was impossible to delete, even with Spybot S&D. I had to contact New.net to get a file sent over that would uninstall the little trojan when starting up the system.

I also make sure my Win XP is updated with the latest patches and I use ZoneAlarm firewall.

Best/Tommy

Cool, I appreciate it. But how do I get rid of these parasites, now that I have them? Is there a free program to do that? I tried to do it manually but was told access was denied access b/c either disk was full, it was copy protected, or in use at the time.
Any thoughts?

One of the first thing that Spybot always finds comes from this site.

Avtually no. I was sent to something called 'spykiller' at http://secure.spykiller.com/secureorder1.asp?spys=16

Don't know if it makes a difference, but it claims to be a spyware and adware program.
Thanks for the link to spyware, I appreciate it. I'll give it a test and donate if it works!

I use Spybot on a semi-regular basis and it works for me. No pop-ups about anything! Sounds like you got a bogus copy in the beginning.

J--

There are many programs out there that claim to be spybot, but aren't. Spybot is free. Between that & AdAware, you can nail anything.

And you CAN delete that stuff if spybot won't let you. You've gotta manualy shut it down, boot to safe mode (or command promopt) & delete the file yourself, but you can. :)

Just an FYI, if you use adware supported software (ie free divx encoder) you CAN NOT delete the adware. Then the software won't work (I use gozilla 3.5 free edition. It installs some adware on my system. I told spybot to ignore that specific adware so I can use my software).

I also use Spybot Search & Destroy, which, in answer to one of the previous posts, will clean the problems that it finds, unlike the tool that user is apparently using.

With reference to Spybot's always finding a "problem" with this site, please keep in mind that cookies can be included among the risks and true malware that Spybot ferrets out. Just because it's a cookie, doesn't mean that it's bad. When managed intelligently from legitmate sites that you visit regularly, they can be very useful in enhancing you experience with the site.

I just used spysweeper for the first time yesterday and it found several spywares that were not found bt adaware.

Another vote for Lavasoft Adaware.

musman wrote:
"I was sent to something called 'spykiller'..."
"Don't know if it makes a difference..."

It does. I read an article just the other day that was talking about sites that "claim" to link to the Spybot site. The sad reality is that you get sent somewhere else and experience exactly what you did.
The link stormstereo provided is the ONLY place to go for Spybot.
BTW, another one to add to your arsenal is Spyhunter (both free and pay versions) from http://www.enigmasoftwaregroup.com/

Mike

The funny thing about some of these programs is that they actually install their own spy agents.

I'd trust AdAware and SpybotS&D, and there are a few others that the major computer magazines just wrote about in the past few months. Check out PCMag and PCWorld.

Incidentally, there are some programs that are very hard to root out. I must have one such program on my system, because every month or so, my Zonealarm program pops up a flag, mentioning that "helprr.exe" wants permission to access the Internet. I do a Google on that name, and nothing exists. I kill that program, and a month later Zonealarm says "acmenet.exe" wants permission..." and so forth. I feel like my computer has a case of herpes. Eventually, though, AdAware or Spybot will flag the source.

Yes, running Spybot Search & Destroy is a good idea.
Having it "Immunize" your IE is even better.
Ditching IE altogether and running Mozilla Firefox instead is the best. :)

I paid for a spyware program before finding spybot. The free spybot worked as good or better, the only difference was the cash I was out of pocket.

I seem to remember that when spybot found the otherone I received some kind of a message that they had stolen his technology and were using it illegally.

The author of the free spybot program does provide the means for making a donation. I sent along a couple of $$ after using the program.

Spot - I take it you prefer System Mechanic to Norton etc. Does SM leave a smaller footprint, work faster/better, - ?

Thanks,

Greg

I do PC doctor work for a living. AVG and Avast are excellent anti-virus apps. and AVG is very resource friendly. I've had experience with all the pay apps. and none are better than these for many reasons.

Read this site carefully, it will give you most of the info I charge for in a nutshell. Between AVG/Avast, the host file, IE-Spyad, Zone Alarm Firewall and common sense concerning email attachments no-one should have any problems.

http://aumha.org/secure.htm

The best free tip I can give anyone is to reference MVP sites before and above all other advice.

MJ

MJ,
I am curious about the AVG. Right after I download and used it I started (and could not stop) getting messages from Windows File Protection that some of it's files had been replaced and needed to be 'reverted'. This continued even though I ran SCANNOW. The problem stopped immediately upon my un-installing the AVG.
I tried to report that on AVG's site but as long as we are using the free version there was no way, that I found, to do so. Have you heard of anyone else having that problem... the constant messages?
Barry