I think real time protection is not working any more...

[Guest]

Hi,

The first days I had installed Antispyware, real time protection seemed to
be working fine. I could see an alert on the lower right part on my screen
about every activity antispyware thought to be worth mentioning. Now,
nothing happens. Although I'm still running certain apps that make the same
changes in the registry each time they run, antispyware does not show the
green alert anymore and nothing is logged in the log list.

I'm using a comm application for example that automatically inserts itself
in the startup key in the registry every time it runs. If I shutdown windows
while it's running on the tray, it will auto-start the next time windows
restarts. If I close it manually before I restart windows, it removes itself
from the registry automatically again and this is what happens every time.

I had configured antispyware to permanently allow this operation and I could
see the green alert every time, and the corresponding log entry. Now, all of
a sudden, nothing of that happens.

Any suggestions?

 

[Guest]

1) check task manager and see whether you can spot Giant-related processes
running.

2) as a quick-and-dirty test to see whether real-time protection is working:

Go to a command prompt.

CD to %windowsroot% (i.e. \windows or \winnt, depending, on the boot drive)

md winlogon.exe <enter>
Watch for a red alert from Microsoft Antispyware--don't worry--this is a
safe test!
It may take 10 or 15 seconds.
When the alert appears, or you give up waiting for it:

rd winlogon.exe <enter>
(i.e. you have created a directory/folder, called winlogon.exe (strange, but
true!) and then removed it.)

You can choose any of the available choices in the red dialog box--none of
them will have any significant effect. Please don't choose always
ignore--there is a genuine threat defined by the slightly flawed definition,
and you don't want to ignore it. (creating this harmless subdir doesn't
create any threat at all--it just triggers a definition which isn't perfectl.)

If this works, you are missing the icon, not the protection. You might see
whether logging off, and then logging back in, gets you the icon back. If
this happens, my understanding is that you are seeing an XP bug, as opposed
to a Microsoft Antispyware bug, but I don't have a fix for that, I'm afraid.

I'm not sure whether some have found that a repair, via Start, control
panel, add or remove programs, Microsoft Antispyware, change, update--may fix
this in some cases.