Very Large Hosts file & Scan Hangs in .701

[Dave M]

I'm seeing four reports both in this forum and on CastleCops forums in regard to
MSAS version .701 hanging when using large Hosts file implementations.
Reportedly, this occurs at about 1 Meg in size or roughly 66,000 individual
hosts, and has been reported when combining hosts tables from various sources by
using the HostsMan program. That seems very strange since supposedly there were
no real code changes between MSAS release .615 and .701, yet the reports
indicate it started to appear when the MSAS program upgraded at the beginning of
this month. Recently and prior to .701, the reports say MSAS took a long while
to scan a large hosts file but the scan eventually completed. This scan step
historically, was referred to in MSAS as the "Polymorphic Browser Hijack Scan",
but I believe the name was changed to "Variable Browser Hijack Scan" and
supposedly(?) repaired in previous Beta releases.

During a scan this hang takes the form of a pop-up window (possibly underlayed)
with just the message "Not Responding", Task Manager may show
GIANTAntiSpywareMain.exe using a large percentages of the CPU, and the scan
animated icon window may freeze.

Can anyone else with a similar hang post to let us know if it is happening and
what size file or host count you are trying to use during your scan. Obviously,
there's always going to be some upper limit on the hosts file size, it just
seems like a step backwards if the limit has just dropped. Thanks.

 

[Guest]

Hi Dave,

I wonder if this happen running in Safe mode.

Engel

 

[Dave M]

Hi Engel... Yes, reported as happening in Safe mode also...
and strangely enough, also in CounterSpy

 

[Guest]

Hi Dave,

I don't have any idea of what is going on, hopefully MSAS is reading this
post, and do something about it.

Later

Engel

 

[Dave M]

Curious and curiouser... CounterSpy also has problems going from 66,000 to
68,000 hosts. Maybe all those "differences" between the two programs aren't as
fundamentally significant as marketing would have us believe. I'm beginning to
think it is the relatively small percentage size change to the Hosts file by
adding 2000 more entries that has crippled both MSAS and CounterSpy. Unless we
hear a different report, I believe the maximum number of hosts that will allow
you to run a successful scan in Beta1 is ~66,000.