Should i purchase spyware doctor

Double-click that icon to launch the program. If asked to update the program definitions, click " Yes ". If not, update the definitions before scanning by selecting " Check for Updates ". If you encounter any problems while downloading the updates, manually download and unzip them from here.

Under " Configuration and Preferences ", click the Preferences button. Click the Scanning Control tab. Under Scanner Options make sure the following are checked UNcheck all others. Scan for tracking cookies. Terminate memory threats before quarantining. Click the " Close " button to leave the control center screen. Back on the main screen, under " Scan for Harmful Software " click Scan your computer.

Click " Next " to start the scan. Please be patient while it scans your computer. After the scan is complete, a Scan Summary box will appear with potentially harmful items that were detected. Click " OK ". Make sure everything has a checkmark next to it and click " Next ". A notification will appear that " Quarantine and Removal is Complete ". Click " OK " and then click the " Finish " button to return to the main menu.

Artman has published numerous articles for various websites, covering a diverse array of computer-related topics including hardware, software, games and gadgets. By Jason Artman. Real-time Scanning Spyware Doctor stays resident in memory when you launch it.

Scheduled Scanning Spyware Doctor automatically waits until your computer is idle before conducting a scan for spyware. Emerging Threats Spyware Doctor offers protection from new threats that have not yet been added to the program's main spyware database.

Types of Threats Spyware can come in many forms; rootkits, Web browser tracking cookies, infected websites, downloaded software and email attachments can all contain spyware or cause spyware infections. One of the first things I look for with new anti-malware software is the date of the last definitions update. Spyware Doctor has a "Database Version" but, as shown above, "5. It also has a count of "Intelli-Signatures" whose meaning is a mystery.

I take this as a bad sign. If anti-malware software can't do something as easy as reporting the last update date so that I can insure it's current , then maybe it won't report other important information in a clear, simple way. The last update date is low hanging fruit.

Update: January 6, I was wrong about this, the last update date is reported. However, the last time I checked the software, it said it was updated three days ago and had a green check mark. In the anti-malware world, missing three days of updates is not an all green condition.

If anything, it's a yellow. Sure enough, the software was missing an update to the "database". Sure enough, after running some scans, Spyware Doctor showed itself to be weak at reporting. After a few scans, I did a "view history" and the last few scans didn't appear in the history. The data recorded about each scan was also incomplete. I did some scans of selected folders and the log doesn't show the folders that were scanned.

Custom scans let you chose among a host of different "scanners". Also missing from the scan log is the type of scanners that were used. For one, scans seemed limited to the C disk.

All the scans I ran on drive letters that represented mapped network drives were refused. There was no error or warning, the scans just always examined zero files. The settings could use a little tweaking, however. By default, Spyware Doctor does not schedule system scans or turn on antirootkit protection; the latter decision serves to speed up scanning and to minimize false positives.